I can now highly recommend Dolphin and Whale Safari out of Auckland – right next to the NZ Americas Cup sailing experience. They were great. Of course, we also ended up with a great day out so I may well be biased. We did however have a group of students on board and they weren’t too interested so that was a bit of a downer. But overall the trip went really well.<\/p>\n
Just out of Auckland and we came across a pod of common dolphins that played around the boat. Wonderful. It helped that I grabbed a spot right on the bow. Greedy thing that I am. So watched them for a while then headed out looking for whales. And boy did we ever find them. Definitely saw Brydes and more common dolphins, but also saw plumes along the horizon that were possibly Fin whales. Not blue as we didn’t see any fluke. But the best thing ever was the feeding – dolphins, whales, gannets diving, the whole Blue Planet experience. And of course I couldn’t figure out the video on the digital camera and even forgot I was holding the stupid thing for a while. Oh well. It was wonderful.<\/p>\n
So Joe and I are well sunburnt and very happy! Last night in Auckland and we went to the pub round the corner from our hotel and had a very nice meal and excellent drinks. All local booze so far and it has been very nice indeed.<\/p>\n
Picked up the rental car this morning and off out of Auckland – once we finally found the highway. They don’t really believe in road signs. It was a beautiful drive up north and we are now in Tutukaka in a really great place called Malibu Mal’s. We have a whole suite to ourselves with kitchen and washer and everything. I’m wishing we were staying longer!<\/p>\n
Tomorrow we are off diving. We’ve been to the dive centre to do all the paperwork so up early tomorrow and onto the boat. Poor Knights – which I keep being told is wonderful so we are looking forward to it.<\/p>\n
Will update as we can and sometime will get some photos onto flickr. We’ve taken enough! We are checking e-mail, but may not be replying – any questions may get answered here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I can now highly recommend Dolphin and Whale Safari out of Auckland – right next to the NZ Americas Cup sailing experience. They were great. Of course, we also ended up with a great day out so I may well be biased. We did however have a group of students on board and they weren’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":338,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/04\/whale-watching\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":0},"title":"Whale watching","date":"Monday, 4 January 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Just back from the best meal we've had all trip - ate at the Indigo Grill, which appears to be part of a series of places.\u00a0 But the place acts like a small independent and the service and food were excellent. We left almost too full to walk! Definitely recommended\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":53,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2005\/12\/19\/penguin-signs\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":1},"title":"Penguin signs","date":"Monday, 19 December 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi! Yes, we've been enjoying ourselves. Please forgive any typos - I'm very tired and this keyboard is sensitive! Right, we left Nelson and drove to Kaikoura which is a wonderful place. Really wonderful. We've had the best meal of our trip - if you are ever in Kaikoura go\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4136,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/09\/quiet-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":2},"title":"Quiet Day","date":"Monday, 9 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Joe is back to work, poor Joe. So back to up and out for breakfast. Found a new place toward the office which is really nice and may well become our breakfast place this week. Crisp hot toast, yay! After breakfast, waved Joe off to the office and headed out.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":59,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2006\/01\/06\/we-survived\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":3},"title":"We survived!","date":"Friday, 6 January 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"And are back from the Southern Ocean today. What a trip. Joe did well, but claimed it was awful. If I looked at him he'd stop smiling. So I let him get on with enjoying the trip. We had rotten weather. After two days rolling around the sea we anchored\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":283,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/19\/dolphins\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":4},"title":"Dolphins!","date":"Friday, 19 June 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, for the last day I had booked a boat trip out to see the wildlife and Mull. I booked with Mara Mhor for a one day trip (Wildlife Safari) out to Mull and around the coast. So we we were up and out early to catch the boat for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4263,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2023\/12\/17\/and-still-no-whales\/","url_meta":{"origin":47,"position":5},"title":"And still no whales","date":"Sunday, 17 December 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Had a slow day yesterday, but we did walk out to El Roque de La Bonanza and took photos. Saw the recreaction area, with swimming and large grilling area and we may go off there tomorrow if it's warm. But otherwise just took it easy. Today we had a taxi\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}