The Flying Albatross of Kaikoura

Walked to the beach this morning which is just over railroad tracks and through some tall grass. The beach is pretty much black gravel, which gets in your shoes and hurts your feet, so it's not really fun to walk to the water. However I found some rocks and sat down on them to enjoy the early morning.


After breakfast, we went on a cruise to look for albatross and other marine birds. We saw various species of albatross. I all caught was that the pink nose ones were called "wandering albatross" and the others were different forms of royal albatross. The wingspan on these birds are huge. The captain of the boat put frozen fish livers off the back of the boat in a case to attract the birds. At the end, he poured out the remaining food, and there was a feeding frenzy with several bird fights.


On the boat ride back, we kept seeing pools of dolphins playing in the water. Unfortunately they are so fast I did not get a good picture. One of the guys from England that I met on the cruise said he saw some yesterday and they were doing back and front flips. We also saw a group of seals sunning themselves and even a penguin (we're supposed to see more tomorrow or the next day). I was surprised how small this species is.

In the afternoon we went for a walk on the Kaikoura peninsula. While the beach this morning was gravelly black rock, this waterfront was huge white limestone rocks. At one time the peninsula was a separate island, but over the years, silt came down from the Kaikoura mountains and filled in the water with land.

All the big rocks on the beach reminded me of Nova Scotia. We have been seeing tons of seaweed in the water, and we finally got an up close view. It was really thick and strong. The wet seaweed was probably 3-4 inches wide and a quarter inch thick. It was really strong and felt like rubber. The dried seaweed reminded me of really, really well-done bacon (but bigger). Wynston, our guide for this trip, picked up a bit of seaweed stalk (didn't know it existed) and carved out a 2-inch diameter ball, which he proceeded to bounce all over the place. It was like a super ball bouncing very high all over the place.

The view was unbelievably gorgeous. We walked along the water on the big rocks for about an hour, then climbed up on the bluff for a bird's-eye view and walked back. Winston, our guide on this trip picked up

Pictures: Kaikoura peninsula (top), albatross fight, fur seal, Find the seals (so how many seals can you find in this picture?)