Dolphins, Seals, and Kaikoura

So a long time ago, I went to Kaikoura and absolutely loved it!  When I first saw it, I named it the town where the mountains meet the sea.  Although now that I've been all over the South Island, it seems like all of New Zealand is where the mountains meet the sea.  Anyway, we went to Kaikoura to celebrate my friend, Alex's, birthday!  

On Saturday morning, I woke up before the sun at 4:45am, crawled out of my tent, saw the stunning stars above, and walked with Allison, Alex, and Brad to the Dolphin Encounter headquarters!  That's right; I SWAM WITH DOLPHINS!!! I got to wear scuba gear and had a snorkel and by the end, the dusky dolphins and I were playing around and swimming in circles together!

Later that afternoon, we started out on the peninsula walk, but walked towards the wrong peninsula, so we just stopped and played around on the beach!

Then we walked back to the town and hopped in a van that took us to another bay where we went kayaking through the treacherous Pacific Ocean to a seal colony at Shark Point!  Julia took all the pictures (since she was in the front of the kayak; we're kayaking dominators) but here's one of the surroundings:

We went back to the hostel and sat in the hot tub until dinner was ready :)  I know, lazy, but best day ever.  We had our big family dinner/birthday dinner for 14 people and then I did the dishes because I had done nothing all day but have fun :)  To finish the night, we went to the Strawberry Tree, a wonderful little pub that was lit by candle light and a fire because it was celebrating Earth Hour!  Awesome, I know.  We had a dance party and had a rad time.  Later, Mandi said that we could have a good time anywhere we go because we bring the party with us; there are 14 of us!!!

The next morning, I crawled out of my tent, once again before the sun, looked at the stars, and headed out to try to dominate the right peninsula walk at sunrise! 

Along the way to the end of the peninsula, we came across this entire wall of aloe plants!

As we approached the tip of the peninsula, we looked over to our left and saw a seal sprawled out on top of a big bush right on the side of the road!  It was another fur seal colony!  

We walked around them and took pictures as they posed for us.

Here's a picture I took through my stunnashades at the end of the peninsula:

I love Kaikoura.