I’m spending a day in the coastal town of Kaikoura and was looking forwards to going swimming with dolphins. It turned out it was much too windy to swim, but the trip still ended up being quite eventful.

The area around Kaikoura is famous for being home to large pods of dolphins and there is a place here that arranges a boat that goes about half an hour out and jump in and swim with wild dolphins. I’ve heard that it’s an amazing experience, but about twenty minutes in the wind kicked in. We did manage to see a few dolphins and an albatross, but as the wind continued to pick up it became clear that the waves were way too big to swim in.

That’s about when the captain noticed a small boat circling and just generally looking like it was having some trouble. We pulled closer and found out that their friend had just surfaced from scuba diving but the rough seas were making it impossible for them to get to him. Our boat was considerably larger so the crew signaled the diver to come towards us and our boat ended up rescuing the diver and making sure the smaller boat was able to safely get back to shore.

Not quite swimming with dolphins, but an adventure nonetheless!