A day at sea

Today was spectacular! We were out on the boat from 9:30 this morning until about six this evening. We had a full day of boating around the Marlborough Sounds, snorkeling, and diving.

We started this morning with a bit of a bump in our plans. We’ve been washing and drying our clothes as we go, which has been a bit of a challenge because of the high humidity here. Until now, there have been fans or heaters in our hotel rooms that aid in the drying process. Unfortunately, this hotel does not have any fans or A/C and there is nowhere to hang clothes by the heater. As you can imagine, we woke up to soaking wet clothes. We specifically chose this hotel because it had a washer and dryer – what we didn’t know is that you are only allowed to use it between 9am and 8pm. Brilliant, as those are the main hours that people are out touring. We tried to hang them out as best we could before we left this morning, but they weren’t dry by the time we got back. So, they are in the dryer as we speak.

Enough about cleaning our clothes, though! The boat ride was amazing, as it was on the ferry yesterday. We started off by boating around the sounds to find active seals. We saw many sunbathing seals and three baby penguins on our way to our first location. Our guide knew a lot about the marine life, and he shared a lot of it with us. At our first location, we went snorkeling with the seals. They come right up to you, swim around you, and do acrobatics. They are very friendly and playful. Incredible doesn’t begin to describe the experience! It was my favorite part of our travels thus far!

Grant is literally right beside this seal. They like to lay upside down on the surface of the water.

Here I am from the other point of view.

Some of the other sea life - we went too deep on our dives

to take the camera, so we weren’t able to get too many pictures

of the other sea life. But it’s all in our memory!

Next, we picked up three guys who work on a cruise ship that came through Marlborough Sounds today. They had the afternoon off, and wanted to go diving. We learned a bit about cruise ship life – they are Dutch (the cruise line was Holland America), as are most of the crew on board. They work for four months and get two month’s vacation. Not a bad set-up!

Our first dive was at the Double Cove Fish Reserve. The fish were very people-friendly, so we were able to touch them as they swam by. We had food, so they swarmed around us, particularly the Blue Cod. It was quite amazing!

Our second dive was at the Koi Wreck, which was a shipwreck in the 1940s. Neither of us have ever done a wreck dive, so it was very interesting. We went down around the different parts of the ship, saw a large seahorse, a stargazer fish (it is a bottom dweller that blends right into the sea floor), a lot of algae and growth on the ship, and many other sea creatures. We really enjoyed exploring the area.

In our wetsuits and weights, getting ready to gear up for our final dive.

Overall, we had a splendid day! The water was a bit cold – 14 degrees Celsius, which they said was about 50 degrees Farenheit. We had on $800, 8mm wet suits, though, so they kept us quite warm! Grant said that my face was stark white during some of the dives because my body was conserving heat to my internal organs. That must have been a sight to see!

On another note, we saw that KU won! Go KU! Too bad we won’t be able to watch the game – hotels limit how much internet you can use, and we only get about 50-100 MB per day, so we have to conserve our usage. It goes very quickly! We are on the road again tomorrow, so I had better get some rest!

Love, the George family