Surf's up!

March has been fairly quiet with no research, so not all that much to report since the last post. Weather has continued to be reasonable, though with a few more autumnal days creeping in, and a few dustings of snow on the mountains. Had my birthday last week, enjoyed the sun and the hot tub, made some good chocolate brownie cake and enjoyed the company of the good friends I’ve made here in Kaikoura.

Still working in the bakery, and got a few more hours last week so a bit of extra money coming in which is always good. I’ve now been trained to use the till and make coffees and milkshakes, so I can help out the front and am not always stuck in the kitchen washing dishes!

Silke, a former cleaner at the Dusky Lodge, and I decided we wanted to try surfing so we booked ourselves a lesson. Originally meant to go out on Paddy’s day but the weather was pretty awful and Dave, the surf instructor, said we should hold out for the better weather the following day. So after enjoying a good night out in the Strawberry Tree we went out yesterday to a surf spot about 10 minutes north of Kaikoura for a lesson with two others. After getting our wetsuits on and doing a few stretches Dave gave us a quick on land lesson on how to stand up and then we got into the water. Paddling onto the wave is quite tricky so Dave pushed us on to each wave. We rode the first on our bellies just to get a feel for the wave and the speed, then the next one we tried to stand up. Everyone managed to managed to wobble their way to some kind of standing position and we enjoyed around two hours in the water. Paddling out is pretty tiring when you’re not used to it and though we were all exhausted by the end I think we all wanted to do more. It was great fun and definitely something I would like to try again. With so many surfers around Kaikoura hopefully I’ll get a chance to borrow a board and give it another go!

I think that’s all for now, a couple more weeks and we should be getting back into the research, and definitely in to autumn.

Birds eye view

Had a good few days since the last post, despite having to say goodbye to a few people. Saana, one of the PhD student was preparing to leave and had lots to do, so no research over this last week really, though she did run a little workshop for us on using Access.

Bonfire on the beach

Rachael, a cleaner at the Dusky Lodge had her last day in Kaikoura on Thursday. The weather was beautiful so we went down to the beach near South Bay and had a swim, then a BBQ by the pool at Dusky and later in the evening a bonfire on the beach.

Saturday morning I started work at the Pot Belly Bakery in town. Pretty easy work, just washing dishes, wiping tables, sweeping up etc at the moment and I’ll probably gradually get trained on other things. Only four hours on Saturdays and Sundays but it means a bit of extra money coming in which I can hopefully save whilst I’m not paying for my accommodation. Saturday evening was the last night for Saana and one of the volunteers, Gemma, so we had a BBQ up at the volunteer house with lots of food including freshly caught fish courtesy of Manuel, the other PhD student.

Humpback whale and dusky dolphins

Had a strange start to Sunday morning, being woken by a phone call from Manuel telling me there was a tsunami coming (as a result of the Chile earthquake) and just to let me know he had been evacuated from the field station… a little hard to comprehend first thing in the morning after a late night! Anyway, the tsunami didn’t amount to much although no boats went out for the rest of the day. I went to work at the bakery again and afterwards met a couple of friends and headed out to the aero club to see if we could get a flight with Adam, one of the pilots who had offered to take us up for a seriously discounted price. We went up around 2.30pm and the weather was beautiful. We quickly found lots of dusky dolphins and a humpback whale which is the first one I’ve ever seen! We then headed around 18 miles offshore to find sperm whales. We spotted to quite close together at the surface and Adam did some figure eights between them so we could get a good look from both sides of the plane. It was very cool to see them from the air, a different perspective from the boat, and it allows you to see the whole body and get a much better impression of the size of them. We turned back to land after about a half hour flight and on the way Adam did a few sharp banks and, after announcing ‘hold on to your cameras’, a zero g drop which was great fun!

Sperm whale

That’s about it for now, into March already… how time flies!