Saturday 22 August 2009

20/8 Claire – Doubtful Sound (day 2)


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Originally uploaded by blenkers
Kayaking this morning was fantastic. There was no sound, no movement and a light that was close to being black and white around us. Very surreal! Ian has loads of great pictures of this which we’ll upload later.

Cereal for breakfast was a good idea as we were still full from last nights feast, but after I had eaten this I found out from Mandy that this was breakfast number one and number two of toast, scrambled eggs with lobster, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and sauce was on it’s way… I am so full it hurts but clearly not enough to stop eating!

As we travelled back up one of the sounds we came across some dolphins in the distance. Now Richard has told us previously that some academic had recently visited Doubtful and published research that stated the Dolphin population in this sound (I think he said there were 56) was being decreased by the stress the cruise boats were having in the area. Now Richard isn’t one for shy opinion and has already stated what a load of rubbish this is, his opinion also backed up by a recent whale and dolphin expert on his boat who said that if the Dolphins where at all stressed by boating activity they would high-tail it out of the area if a boat appeared, which they don’t. Next thing you know the Dolphins are making their way toward the boat, not just to play at a distance but to literally get a free ride in the water being pushed forward by boats bow, swimming on their sides to get a good look at us lot hanging over the bow with our cameras and they must have done this, about 5 of them, for over 5 mins. They looked as curious about us as we were about them. It was amazing, truly amazing. I’d go as far to say the highlight of my trip. Ian got amazing video footage which he can put up also.

Oh and I caught a fish!

1 comment:

  1. Sounds amazing! Glad you did the overnight thing on Doubtful Sound. Very jealous. Great photos. Did you go through the really dark tunnel in the car on the way from Te Anau to Milford?
    Philly

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