Who doesn’t love a good road trip – especially when you are headed north to the world famous dive site – the Poor Knights!
Four of us cruised up to Taupo to dive Accacia Bay, nice and warm, with 18 degrees down at 20m. The next day we headed to Goat Island, with the rest of Auckland apparently, for a snorkel. An awesome fishy experience with plenty off snapper, mackerel, drummers, parore and even more snapper!
After dinner in Whangarei the whole group finally got together at Northland Dive ready for a week of diving adventures.
To kick off the diving we headed out for a local day trip to the Canterbury Wreck and Kariparipa Reef in the Bay of Islands.
Diver “‘I liked the wreck dive a lot more than I would have expected and the nudibranchs were quite spectacular throughout, best sighting for me were the baby squids however, one even inked (very cute)”
It was then time to move all our gear to Sun Spy and settled in for the trip over to the Poor Knights. Keen eyes spotted a Sunfish (Mola mola) on the way over. The first dive is one of my favourites”, Middle Arch and yes the frog in Bernie’s Cave got a kiss too.
For the next few days we completed multiple dives at various great locations, Blue Mao Mao Arch and Landing Bay Pinnacle to name a couple.
The swell picked up on the last day, making a little surgey but enjoyable.
Diver “It was a truly amazing trip, my first real dive trip and was spoiled by the excellent conditions with a luxury (there was a lift!) liveaboard with great crew and company.”
Diver “It was a great trip, I loved the liveaboard, 2 nights was a perfect length of time.”
Diver ” Every dive was something a little new, with exploring, photographing, and lots of laughs and stories aboard the boat afterwards.”
It was a great trip with a great crew with lots of banter and we think we have solved Schrodinger’s Cat theory as everything has a 50% chance of happening. Except our last day of diving which was cancelled, thanks ‘Cody’, so the road trip home was a bit more adventurous. Taking the inland route to Leigh and following some local advice we had at McLeods Brewery – superb!
Following a few more brown signs we ticked off a couple of touristy things on our way home to Wellington like Abbey Caves, Whangarei Waterfalls, Blue Springs, Mangahwai Heads and the Hamilton Gardens.
A big thank you to Shane, Julia and Lili from Northland Dive for looking after us so well, to Joep for his great navigation and to Helen & Rupert for picking such great food stops.
Alan – Divemaster & Trip Leader
Diver – “One morning I remember waking up inside Rikoriko cave. During the night the swell increased, so Shane moved Sun Spy to shelter inside the cave so that we had a comfortable night.
I will also remember the gorgeous sunsets.”