Wish Ewe Were Shear

Since this post is all about how much fun I've been having, here's today's comic:

 It's highly stressful, you can imagine.  Gaming, kayak battles, wine tastings, the zoo, BBQs, hikes, day trips.  Sounds dreadful, doesn't it?

Hiking is great in this area.  The hills above Christchurch are great, as noted before.  We did another hike out there with some friends a while back.  The land is open and used as pastures for sheep (what square inch of NZ ISN'T?).  The black lab in our party decided it might be fun to be a sheepdog for a few minutes.

Beeeeeeehhhhhh!

 When next we wanted to go hiking, the hills had been closed due to recent earthquakes, so we found a little forest along the beach.  In walking through the forest, it was discovered that some of it had been reclaimed as a place to put all the debris from the February quake.

Pieces of Christchurch

By the way, this is what carpooling looks like with Trond's car...

 Trond and I took a day trip to Akaroa, a peninsula to the south of Christchurch.  It's cute and has a sort of "France" feel to it.  All the roads have names like, "Rue d' bleh bleh."

The week between Christmas and New Years is called, "Big Gaming Week." Not only is full of gaming, but we fit in a hike, several bbqs, and even a wine tasting.  The games varied from xbox LAN parties to card games, table top board games, computer LAN, and even role playing games.  I enjoyed a board game based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy universe. Basically the game consisted of trying to control as much of the city as possible.  I won, but I think that was because whenever there was a calamity (fire, flood), my part of town was luckily spared by the dice roll.

I was red

One of the days during the week, we all met for brunch at a really nice bistro called, "Joe's Garage."  After a fabulous meal, we all headed to the grocery store for wine selection.  This is what we ended up with for our wine tasting/day of more gaming:

Our trip to the zoo was fantastic.  It's actually called, "Orana Park" and is out by the airport.  We timed everything we did that day around the feeding schedule.  They are really good about them not being doubled up so you have to choose between animals.  In all we watched the feeding of: tiger, kiwi, giraffe, lion, rhino, otter, meerkat, cheetah, and spider monkeys.  I actually got to feed the giraffe!

The tongue comes out and grabs the leaves.  Slimy!

For $30 you could be inside the cage while the lionesses were being fed.  It's a group of tourists and one guy handing out pieces of meat.  Pretty scary to have lions roaring RIGHT in your face like that, if you ask me.  A couple shots later shows a lioness clawing at the side.  Actually pretty funny to watch the tourists scurry from one side of the cage to the other.

During our walk around the zoo, we were informed about the animals and their status as endangered species.  I was interested to note that the zookeepers have no qualms (or legal prohibitions) about saying things like, "There is nothing magical or holy about this creature.  You will not be healed of cancer by eating its heart" etc etc.  Clearly they feel very strongly about the safety of these animals in the wild.  We also heard about how the earthquakes of recent weeks had been affecting the animals.  Apparently the four rhinos ran straight into the center of their field and formed a defensive circle, horns out.  This was a couple of minutes before they started, too.  We heard that in the February quake, one of the river otters escaped its pen and had a lovely field trip around all the park moats.

My favorite part of the trip to the zoo was the cheetah pen.  I know, I know.  Cheetahs.  Everybody loves cheetahs.  But these wild animals were treating their trainer like a mommy.  It was so cute.  Despite the fact that it was feeding time, they just wanted cuddles.  And one got jealous of the other getting scritches and decided to intervene.

Belly rub?

She then handed them each a hunk of meat, which they devoured rather quickly.  One of them came back to lick the bucket, and when that was clean, he sat with his paws on the trainer's legs and licked her fingers.  Sometimes they have the meat dangling from a wire that is then fed across the long field at high speed so visitors can see them run.  That was another thing I noticed about this zoo.  There is a lot more space for the animals.  Fully twice the size of the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. 

After New Years, the fun didn't stop.  A few days later was the annual "Epic River Battle" involving rented kayaks on the River Avon and a lot of water guns.

Excellent use of umbrellas as shields

Trond emerging from under the bridge.  Gah!

 A couple of weeks ago, we went to the beach.  I don't have any pictures from that, as a friend with a waterproof camera took those.  It was great to be in the sea again, body surfing and borrowing Trond's boogie board.  Appropriately the same day, we went to a Pirate Party.  Trond and I didn't have costumes, but a friend of Trond's had lots to spare.  I ended up looking like this:

I was instructed to make that face.

The last thing I want to talk about in this post is Kaikoura.  I have now been there twice, but I'll combine both visits into the photos posted here.  First of all, Kaikoura is gorgeous.

Taken a stone's throw from Trond's parents' place.

Not only is it by the turqoise sea, not only do mountains rise up all around it, but it serves as a very popular spot for marine mammals.  There is a pod of Dusky Dolphins that live there year-round.  Lucky for us!  The first time we went, the swim with the dolphins was all booked up, so we made the reservation for the following week.  The first week we were there, we mostly hiked and relaxed in the warmth.  There's a really nice hike around the peninsula. We only got about a third of the way, since the weather turned bad.

The shoreline along the peninsula walk.  Home to gull and fur seal colonies.

Now, on to the good part.  Swimming with dolphins.  AWESOME Christmas present from Trond's parents.  The tour left at 5:30 in the morning, but we were assured the temperature of the water would wake us up.  I squeezed into my very first wetsuit and was handed child-sized flippers.  Oh, ha ha.  Out on the boat it took no time at all to get the call that dolphins had been sighted to the south.  This tour doesn't use any means but their eyes to find the dolphins.  They don't feed the dolphins or entice them with toys.  Basically what they do is find the pod, get into its path, and release the snorkelers off the stern.

It was clear today was a good day.

There are two reasons why the tour operators say this swim is the best.  Firstly, it's the calmest water of the day first thing in the morning.  This is not to say it isn't a bit rough.  After all, this is open ocean.  The geography of underwater Kaikoura is such that there's a relatively shallow area (where we were...70 meters deep, or 230 feet) that suddenly drops off into a huge trench.  In this trench is where two currents converge, bringing lots of tasty food to the whales and dolphins of the area.  Luckily sperm whales don't really come into the shallow area, 'cause that would have freaked me out!

Speaking of freaking out, many of you know my phobia of sharks.  Getting into deep water was not something I was really keen on trying.  But I figured, there's over a hundred dolphins around and they kick shark butt.  So when I first slid into the water, you'll forgive me my brief, three minutes of NOT looking for dolphins before I reconciled myself to the fact that the water was somewhat dark and deep around me.  I don't care, there's dolphins!

Actually it was rather tricky for the boats (there were three) to position correctly, as the dolphins are likely to say, "Hey!  A boat!  Let's go play in the bow wave!"

I love the bubbles on the one on the left, as it exhales before breaking the surface

The second reason this was the best swimming time of day was because dolphins hunt at night.  It was just after sunrise and they were full and feeling rambunctious.  It was not uncommon to see the dolphins leaping clean out of the water to do flips.  Basically, they have lots of playful energy this time of day.  As the boat lined us up right in front of the charging, acrobatic dolphins, our guide shouted, "You're about to find out what a pod of dolphins looks like!"  The boat sounded the horn and into the water we went.

In all, the boat allowed us five swims.  We would spend about five minutes in the water each time before the dolphins had sped off down the coast.  We'd time the swells back up to the boat and slide off the next time the horn blew.  It was so much fun.  I recommend it to anyone.  They encouraged us to make noises at the dolphins to get them to form some curiosity and stay a while.  I generally cooed at them.  In retrospect, I think I was making Orca noises, which was not particularly wise.  Trond was actually melodious.  Whatever we were doing, it worked.  On almost every swim, we each found that a dolphin had taken an interest.  Their way of being curious is to swim around you in circles, peering at you with one eye.  I'd start talking to it with my "kitty voice" which, in a snorkel, sounded something like this: "Squee!  Squee squee?  Kee Kee! Awwww!"  They were close enough to touch, but we didn't reach out.  We aren't allowed to touch them.  Sometimes when a bunch swam past, though, you could feel the buffeting of their tails.  We didn't have to worry about being rammed by any of them, of course, since they have their own clicking sonar to tell them where we are.

Bonus, Trond and I decided to rent an underwater digital video camera.  Most of my footage came out wibbly or not looking at dolphins at all.  When you're surrounded by dolphins in the wild, your first thought is not, "Oh, better point the camera straight."  That being said, we managed to get some good footage.  It just needs some tweaking before posting online.  Trond was much better at filming, actually.  I was really jealous of him because he saw the baby dolphin, and I didn't.

Baby!!!!

 It was a fabulous time in the water with the dolphins.  The water was actually pretty warm too, 17C.  Out in the wind afterward, barreling away at 20 knots, it got cold.  Luckily, they provided blankets.

Awwwww

I was going to end the blog post there, but something ridiculous happened on our way back into the marina that deserves to be mentioned.  Trond and I were casually looking out the window as a man in his aluminum dinghy went by to check his crab pot nearby.  He was moving very fast, at full throttle, and overshot the crab pot.  In an effort to make up lost time, he turns at a sharp angle.  Too sharp.  He realizes his mistake too late.  The water quickly comes rushing in the side.  The whole dingy then simply slips into the sea, sinking on the spot.  Trond and I called out a bemused "Man overboard!" to the tour guys, who then swung the boat around to go pick him up.  Needless to say, the guy was very embarrassed, but only served to embarrass himself more by saying, "Oh, I think I hit a rock!"  No.  No, you didn't.

Okay so the video is too large or something to upload here.  So, here is a link to it on YouTube.  Apologies for shaky cam.  We were excited and the dolphins were quick!
http://youtu.be/GCAN3lkWVKQ