Heading Back to Christ Church

Agra is believedsite of an ancient Hindu Kingdom, but the city
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January 12, 2005:
We got back from the hike and had a very nice dinner at the blue ice cafe. We even treated ourselves to an awesome dessert of mud cake and ice cream. And then... back on the road again. we didn't have far to drive, just a couple of hours up to Greymouth where we were to stay in the nicest of all our accomodations at the global village international. It was like a little paradise on earth.

Journal Continued:
The drive there was also very pleasant as well -- we watched as we slowly emerged from the temperate rainforest and found ourselves again along the coastline with big waves and rocky beaches. Josh and I stopped not far from Greymouth to watch the sunset. It was one of our first romantic sunsets. I was already getting sad to think that he was going to be heading back to Tokyo so soon.

Journal Continued:
We had a really nice night in Greymouth in the creatively decorated hostel filled with international artensenal figures and paintings. Our room was a very warm and cozy burnt sienna. I loved being there. I didn't want to leave. But, as it happens, we had to continue on. I had to drop Josh off at the airport in Christ Church and make my way to kaikoura for my own adventures. We had a bit of a stressful drive on the way back to CC as the car was acting up and we had to call and deal with the rental car company and then watch carefully that the car didn't overheat and we made it to christchurch to exchange cars and ... blah blah blah. It wasn't exactly the way that I wanted to end the trip with Josh, but that was a little beyond my control really.

Journal Continued:
I arrived in Kaikoura and stayed at a really pleasant little place just the one night. I wanted to stay there for two nights, but I couldn't get it organized. Instead I woke up early in the morning and swam with dolphins. The dolphins were swimming all around me, under me over me around me. They zipped by so fast. I tried to take some underwater photos, but they were so fast that I probably only got water.

Above: Rachel on the beach on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand.

Left: A sign, warning cyclists of the impending danger of a railtrack in the road.

Below: Josh and I were driving along and getting used to driving on the left side of the road. We were even getting used to the one lane bridges that were everywhere on the South Island. But then we came to this bridge and weren't sure what we were supposed to do. One lane, shared by two directions of traffic, AND A TRAIN. The tracks came out of nowhere from the woods, merged out onto the road, and straight over the bridge. We waited, to gain courage... and then we just went for it. Luckily, there weren't any flipping cyclists, or trains at the same time of our crossing.

Journal Continued:
Plus I was distracted by how cold the water was. It was like an iceberg had just melted and I was in it. Plus the dolphins weren't really interested in hanging out. They had their own agenda. So we spent a good deal of time, rushing back to the boat, following in the boat, hopping back in. Each time I had to jump in, I dreaded it entirely. But I did, each time. I am quite glad that I did because it was a really unique and memorable experience. It was hilarious, because the guide told us that the dolphins were intrigued by noises, so there we were, all of the boat visitors, making crazy noises. The most effective noise I made was a Trilled R. The other good one was the noise of Daryl Hannah screeching her name in Splash. These dolphins were fun loving. They would jump out of the water and do flips and really seemed to have a great time. And they weren't just doing it for us... they were having a grand ol time just on their own.

After chasing dolphins for a couple of hours, I rushed back to the hostel and got changed for my boating whale watch experience. That was quite cool as well.

Journal Continued:
The Whale Boat was very fancy and it had 3d imaging of the geography underneath the water. Essentially, around karikoura is one of the few places where an underwateer canyon comes so close to the shore of land. Only a few KM off of the coast the depth of the ocean floor dropped from 80 m to 1.5km. This is the reason that deep sea diving whales like the sperm whale come in so close to land. We watched on the screen as the boat passed over the great divide of land and the grand canyon underwater. Soon we came upon some whales that were up on the surface recovering from their super deep dives. They would pop up on the surface and sit for a spell as they refueled, cleaned out the bad CO2 toxins and inhaled.

Journal Continued:
Then they would dive down giving us all a nice opportunity to take a picture of that tail going down. We got really lucky and saw about 5 whales go down for a deep sea fishing dive. Evidently down at the bottom, they eat squid, fish, giant squid and more. The giant suid, which has never been seen alive by man, evidently can get even larger than even the blue whales... huge creatures that noone has ever seen alive.

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