Dive two

Cleaner Fish Bay. Decided to ditch the group and go it alone for the second dive. The navigation was pretty simple so did the dive with just the two of us.

Sooooo much nicer. Brian felt a lot better and we could enjoy discovering a cave with moray eels in for ourselves. 4 rays swam sailed by us each bigger than the last. Wow. Amazing!

Came up very happy after. Woo!

Lunch time

After first dive came a well needed hot drink and lunch and then a little tour of the islands on the boat. We went though a few arches and into a massive cave. Nice!

Dive one

First dive on Trevor's Rocks. Bit exciting at Brian's tank fell off 10 mins into the dive! Bit of a pavlova as the guide had to fix it back on before we could continue. Saw a sting ray and a scorpion fish (big!) and lots of other stuff. Strange environment as used to diving on coral reef in 27C waters whereas this was very different as it was rocks and kelp like stuff and the water was a cold 18C so we had full suits with hoods and booties on.

Only thing which marred a fab dive was that our companions were totally annoying: whenever you looked at something they would rush in with their camera and then the next thing all you could see was be flailing fins and arms - grrrrr :-/ couldn't get away from them. Novice divers with cameras should be simply shot.

Off to the Poor Knights

Up early and checked in for diving. Got the boat out to the dive site. An hour trip out to the islands. Getting excited now.

Tutukaka

Arrived at Tutukaka. Found the dive shop which was shut but asked at a restaurant for a camp site as we hadn't seen one and amazingly there was this one just 100m around the corner! Fantastic! Dive shop, camp site, restaurants, bar and cigarette shop all within 3 mins walk around a really nice marina - result!!! Great end to the trip! :)

Dinner in Schnappa Rock was excellent. Landed on our feet here.

The scenic route to diving

Left the Kauri Forest and the scenic route took us by this bay. From there it was a 2 hour drive to the East coast this time where we were going to dive the next day.

Road ended up very small and twisty. At one point nearly run down a herd of cows which were casually crossing the road for milking completely unattended. Reached an impasse when one just stood in the middle of the road staring at us whilst quietly munching on some grass. Missed the classic photo op sadly :(

Lord of the Forest

You can read the story if you like but another stop and a little walk to our last big tree.