Boating on the Marlborough Sounds

February 3

Today was a long day on the water. Since we postponed the mail tour yesterday, we had to double up on today’s water activities. Thankfully the storm passed overnight and we woke up to beautiful weather.

We were up early and down at the marina at 8 a.m. for our E-Ko swim with the dolphins tour. We got suited up in wetsuits (regretted eating those pastries the day before), tried to suck it all in for the pictures Mitch insisted on taking, and boarded the boat. With binoculars glued to my face for the first hour, scanning the water for dolphins and whales, I was becoming uncertain about the whole exploration.

Where were they? Would we even get to see them? Or even the elusive Orca whale? It was the hardest game of “I Spy” I ever played. Another half an hour later and still nothing.

The other natives were starting to get restless as well. Then someone spotted something in the water. The skipper slowed the boat and as we got closer he identified it as the Hector dolphin, the smallest and rarest dolphin in the world and native to NZ. There was a pod of about 10, then another pod showed up. Thirty or so dolphins entertained us by swimming alongside the boat. The guide said it was nearly the entire population of Hector dolphins in the Marlborough Sounds and we were having a fortunate interaction. The dolphins were curious and playful and loved the attention we were giving them.

The rare Hector dolphins

The kids were delighted; the adults were overjoyed. I was verklempt! We didn’t want to leave them and we stayed a long time enjoying the moment. Because they are an endangered species, we were not allowed to swim with them. So we left them to look for the Bottlenose dolphin that we would be able to swim with, if we managed to find them. Another hour or so trolling the water, but we didn’t find any. Bummer. To appease those of us who wanted to get in the water for a dip, or a pee, we found a sheltered cove and a handful of us jumped in the water to snorkel and swim.

The water was pretty cloudy, so we only saw a few fish and swam for about 15 minutes. Thankfully, our super thick wet suits kept us relatively warm after a few minutes of adjusting to the shock of getting into the water and they kept us buoyant, too. Bad news: no swimming with dolphins. Good news: we got a refund for not swimming with dolphins. The company offers a generous guarantee! Back on the boat, we peeled off our wetsuits and headed back to Picton. When we arrived at the dock, we raced to the hotel to take a quick shower before heading back to the marina for the afternoon activity.

The Beachcomber mail boat delivery tour was really interesting. Jason was our skipper and delivery postman of not only the mail, but the incredible history and knowledge of the Marlborough Sounds.

Jason is a member of the Ngati Kuia tribe, the oldest and largest in the northern part of the South Island and his tribe are spiritual people in relation to their natural environment. He explained how there is a restoration project now taking place in the forests along the Sounds.

Pine trees are not native to New Zealand. Commercial lumber companies introduced and planted them along the Sounds because the trees grow quickly in the New Zealand habitat and the companies can rapidly harvest their lumber for quick profit. However, the trees are wreaking havoc on the environment and the fragile ecosystem. The tree’s needles are highly acidic and when the trees shed their needles all year long, they leach toxins into the soil and destroy the waters in the Sounds by polluting the waterways and eliminating the algae and food sources the sea life needs to feed upon.

As part of the restoration project, the nature conservancy is now using poison “bullets” to eradicate the trees; they expect this process will take some 150-200 years to completely eliminate all the foreign pine trees from the Sounds.

We arrived at our first delivery dock with Oscar the dog barking and awaiting his mail bag and a treat from the postman at the end of the dock.

This dog doesn’t bite the postman — he has treats

Driving into the first postal delivery stop

We then boated around to a few more docks and delivered mail to other residents who live on the water. They come down to their dock and retrieve their mail in a bag that gets exchanged for their outgoing mail.