One of our JUCY travellers sent in this hilarious snippet from her diary which I thought I would share. Thanks Sylvia for sending this through! Love, Lucy xx
Hi Jucy, I wrote a daily log while in NZ scooting around in my little Jucy Sirion – here is the account of the Kaikoura Whale Watching day…
The road to Kaikoura down the East coast was absolutely fabulous. For most of the route it hugged the ocean’s edge, which is the Pacific down this side of the country and it was a tremendous journey which I enjoyed enormously the whole way down.
Kaikoura is really nice, a proper seaside town with lots of families about, youngsters swanning around just being young and foreign tourists who come mainly for the whale watching. Speaking of which, I went into the Information site to book and was told the trips were full today but I could book for tomorrow. This didn’t seem like a good idea as the cyclone that was way up North today was forecast to ease down this coast tomorrow and although it will be fairly blown out, it is still forecast to disturb the seas to quite an extent. The woman offered me a place on the ‘wait list’.
The deal was I had to go half an hour before the tour was due to depart and just hang about to see if anyone failed to show up which didn’t seem much of a chance on such a lovely day but I decided to take the offer up. So, along I trotted at the appropriate time, I didn’t know where I was on the list but nevertheless I hung around in hope. Eventually it got to the ‘wait list’ people’s turn, there were two free places, a couple were first on the list but unbelievably they hadn’t turned up either, then the first chap went up as his name was called, another lucky break because if a couple had been before me that would have taken the two seats, and then the 2nd name was called and hey, it was me.
Excellent, I had my place. What a trip. They gave us a bit of safety chat, about lifebelts and boats and keeping to our seats inside while we were chasing the whales and boy they weren’t kidding when they said ‘chasing’. We set off racing across the sea in their big catamaran and it was worse than the big dipper. Within minutes I realised that my excited and happy anticipation had been very ill founded, this was a nightmare and people were being sick, heaving and vomiting and I felt absolutely awful. Then I was saved by the very pleasant American woman who was sat beside me who had also been sat next to me on the bus that took us to the wharf. She advised me to focus constantly on the horizon because it was the only fixed, stable point and she was right, it worked, leastways it stopped me actually being sick and just about enabled me to enjoy the event but I felt very fragile all the way.
We bounded over the huge swell while people screamed and puked and pretty soon tracked down some whales. Once we got near everything was ok because we had to slow down to almost nothing to circle and view them. They were Sperm whales, not the biggest by any means but huge to me, these were about 15/18 metre long, their spout is at 45 degrees which makes them look a bit drunk and they are BIG.
Once, we had a false alarm and the captain told everyone to get back inside but didn’t give us enough time before racing off again and three of us were stuck outside. Stuck because he went that fast and the rise and fall of the swell was so wild we daren’t move, just hung on like glue to the railings and hoped we were still on board when we stopped again. I was wearing a skirt which was a really bad decision as it was around my waist half the time with the wind but I daren’t let go to pull it down. I was clinging onto a pole like a drunk and onto the rail for grim death and alternating between swearing and begging no-one in particular to ‘stop, stop, please stop’. I just had to hope no-one could see us from the boat because if they could, I gave them a great view of my knickers, not what they had paid for but a laugh for them at least.
We saw three whales in all and they all very obligingly dived for us and as they did so they displayed their tail just as they do on all the photographs. Me, I didn’t’ get one photograph because I daren’t let go of the side rails while I watched. My sea legs had completely deserted me and in any case I was petrified the Captain would set off again too quickly for me to escape down the stairs to the safety of inside the cabin again! We also saw some very rare dolphins which are native to NZ only called Hector Dolphins, they have a fin shaped a bit like Mickey Mouse’s ear and they jumped and spun in the air for us and put on a great show which is apparently almost unknown with that breed. Then a pod of Shadow Dolphins appeared and they played around the boat, dipping under and racing along the bows which is always thrilling to watch, so with all that and the odd seal, it was a great outing.
All the wildlife was great but even with all those separate sightings I can only just say that it was worth it and if the American woman hadn’t helped out with the anti-sickness hint I think the day would have been a disaster. 5 minutes in I just wanted to be back on dry land and the thought of another 31/2 hours of that violent shifting swell felt like a nightmare. It will be a one and only for me so I am glad it all worked out so well.
Warm fuzzies alert! Meagan, an Australian living in Germany spotted a JUCY Campa on the streets of Germany and wondered how this little campa got so far from home. So she emailed us. Check out her email below and pic (to the left) that she took next to the campa. 
