We love Wellington diving but when given the opportunity to head north on a road trip – who could refuse?
While officially “work” – a week away with incredible scenery, amazing dives and great company definitely counts as a holiday
Our first stop was Taupo but once again the river was low and slow so we skipped the drift dive for a splash in Accacia Bay. An opportunity to shake out the cobwebs and work on our mysterious stone circle.
After a rough start and a boat trip that felt way longer than 15mins for some we were finally on the Rainbow Warrior. The story behind the wreck is as fascinating as the dive itself. The relatively small wreck, 40m in length, is easily explored on a single dive. It is also home to a variety of marine life, including morays, scorpionfish, bigeyes and 1000’s of jewel anemones.
Our expectations of the 2nd dive were not high as we headed to a nearby reef to hide from the weather conditions – however we were blown away with the fish life on this dive. What’s not to love on a reef dive with a school of 100+ kingis, morays & eagle rays and finished with enough blue maomao that you could lose your dive buddy.
Do you remember the old slogan ‘Don’t leave home until you have seen the country’? Well it turns out that some of our divers had never been this far north before so it was time to take them as far north as you can go with a visit to some beautiful beaches, Cape Reinga and the giant sand dunes.
While half the group were busy exploring the others headed out to dive the Canterbury wreck but not to worry we all got to dive the wreck again the next day. The Canterbury is such a large ship, over 110m in length, you can not do it justice in a single dive. So with several dive opportunities and some great guidance from the team at Pahia Dive we were able to explore some new areas of the wreck which was exciting for us all.
Having completed the wreck diving portion of our trip it was time to dive some of the most famous reefs in the world with an overnight trip to the Poor Knights Islands on Northland Dive’s Sun Spy.
The Poor Knights deserves it’s reputation with a variety of dive sites to impress all levels of divers. Northern Arch was so good, full of fish and great light shining through, we dived it twice. We never saw the whale bones in Rikiriko Cave which gives us a good excuse to go back but after 6 years of diving Alan finally saw a John Dory at Middle Arch.
Liveaboards are a great way to go diving, plenty of food, easy entries and on Sun Spy even easier exits with a lift!
