queenstown to christchurch . . .

before i go on, here's the view from the porch at the place i stayed in queenstown. the accomodation itself was nothing to write home about, but the view was to die for.

• this was basically an all-day bus trip, beginning at 7.30 am . . . i cannot stop torturing myself with early starts. the highlight of the drive was a stunning view of aoraki - mt. cook from tekapo, where the lakes are a shocking shade of turquoise - all natural, the driver assured me, caused by some kind of sediment run-off from the mountains. very weird looking - like no water color i'd ever anticipated seeing in nature - but stunning.
• on the recommendation of a woman at my hostel in queenstown, i booked a bed at dreamland, this out-of-the-way backpackers place in christchurch. i wasn't up to finding the place and lugging all my stuff twenty minutes' walk out of the city center, so i took a cab - they have these 'green cabs' in christchurch (also auckland and wellington) - the standard taxi in their fleet is a toyota prius instead of the usual gas-guzzling towncar. the place was worth traveling to - a small, quiet, super clean hostel with a friendly proprieter, cheap laundry facilities and 10mb of free internet included. i wished i could have stayed longer. if you are ever in christchurch, try to stay at dreamland - it's terrific, and apparently no one knows about it, because i had just one roommate in a five-bed dorm, and there appeared to be no one else there.
• next day i took the bus to kaikoura: destination whale watching. it only took about three hours to get there from christchurch, so i went straight to the i-site to book a spot on a whale watching boat. unfortunately, though i got a spot easily enough, the whales had moved out of the company's operating area, so i had to eat fish & chips for lunch, loaf on the beach and go shopping instead . . . too bad.
• i did manage to get on a whale watching trip the next morning (saturday), and just a few miles off shore, we saw a sperm whale. kaikoura is ideally situated for whales because it's near the edge of the continental shelf and a place in the ocean where two major currents converge, which brings a lot of tasty whale treats to the area. apparently it's a popular spot for adolescent male sperm whales, who spend about twenty years stuffing themselves before they reach sexual maturity and grow large enough to attract the females. the sperm whale we saw was familiar to the tour guides; they call him tutu. he was taking a breather on the surface - we could see his exhalations from half a mile away. after a short time, he dove for a feed, and we saw his tale flick above the surface: HUGE! and he's nowhere near full grown. tutu was the only whale in the area (they were listening for whale sonar with a kind of underwater hearing aid) so we hung around for an hour or so til he came back up.
• meanwhile we were taking in the scenery: blue sky, darker blue/green ocean, and lots of birds, including several species of albatross, one of which was taking a bath not far from our boat. apparently the albatross spends nearly all of its life at sea and even drinks sea water - it has its own water filter built in to remove the salt. amazing.
• we got to see tutu one more time - he came up for another short breather before diving again. on the way back to the marina, we also saw a huge pod of dusky dolphins - close to two hundred of them playing around the boat. they're much smaller than bottlenose dolphins, but still a lot bigger than people. i sort of can't believe i actually saw a sperm whale. you read about this stuff - whale hunting in the old days, the pictures of these massive animals dwarfing the whaling boats and yet somehow no match for the harpoons and the boiling pots. i'm not exactly a rabid environmentalist, but i can see why people go nuts trying to save the whales. they're magnificent.
• nothing else in kaikoura could really top whale watching, except maybe swimming with dolphins, but i got back from the whale watch too late for that, so i had to spend another afternoon walking by the beach. i'm having a rough vacation, let me tell you. do you feel less envious if i tell you the beaches in kaikoura are really rocky, not much sand at all? probably not. i'm just rubbing it in, so i'll have to close for now . . .