Each year the dive club aims to escape winter and heads overseas for some amazing diving. This year we headed over to the tiny island of Niue. Three and half hours northeast of Auckland, Niue is a rugged coral atoll with an amzing coastline with caves, chasms and lagoons to explore. The diving is fantastic with clear waters, walls, reefs and even more caves.
We arrived at our resort midafternoon and receieved a warm introduction, drinks & nibbles and an island briefing from the manager which included directions to town, turn left and go over the hill or straight ahead or turn right for the longer route. The island’s roads ~67km around. We also met the dive team and walked out our back door to drop our gear off at the dive shop ready for our first dives the next day.
Launching the boats is a unique experience as the boats are winched off trailers and lowered into the water before we all climb aboard.
Our first dive was outside the resort with some beautiful hard corals and colour reef fish. We then headed over to the infamous Snake Gully for our second dive where a manta glided past and then we were stunned with 2 humbacks just chilling under the surface ~30m away. While you can often hear whales underwater to actually see them on a dive is experience to behold! We never did see any snakes on that dive.
Sunday is typically a day of rest but we jumped into the van and headed off to explore some of the many tracks around the island – with plenty of lookouts we were able to see whales from shore as we explored the reef flats, rockpools, caves and chasms. We spent the late afternoon snorkelling and diving at Washaway Cafe.
With another 3 days of diving to complete we explored a number of sites out from Alofi and Avatele Bays. We dived Dome and Air Bubble Cave, swam through the Chimney and got back to Snake Gully.
Niue has a wide variety of intersting dive sites, some great snorkelling opportunities and too many walks to explore in just one week
We are keen to head back again in 2017 – If you are keen to join us let us know.