It’s that time of year again when Claire heads North under the guise of work and takes members of the dive club with her as accessories!
The first dive of the road trip is a drift dive down the Waikato River, with eddys, rapid currents, awesome rock formations, hot pools and both Brown and Rainbow Trout.
After a full day of driving we arrived in Tutukaka and starting loading the boat in anticipation for our departure and 4 days of diving at the Poor Knights Islands.
Despite the high winds we had fine days and got to dive all the key sites including our first dive at Tie Dye Arch. With walls full of colour, stingrays, kingis, morays and pink & blue maomao this was a great dive to start the trip. (I also saw a rare striped boarfish but apparently without photographic evidence this doesn’t count!)
Other dives included Northern, Middle, Barren and Blue Maomao Arches, We also visited Rock Lily Inlet, Scary Cave & Cave Bay which surprisingly has no cave in it.
The trip back was pretty hairy but I chose the easy way out and fell asleep so missed it all.
The journey home was broken up with our final dive at the Leigh Marine Reserve at Goat Island. We were surprised by the lack of fish life nut enjoyed getting up close with some big snapper who escorted us around the site.
Definitely a trip not to be missed and I will be back up there again in 2015!