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Published: October 26th 2006
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It was the size of a tennis ball! - Rainy day at the islands.
We arrived in to Paihia where the weather was over cast and rained on and off all day. Never-the-less we pondered about town looking at the shops and inquiring into conditions and prices for swimming with dolphins the last big thing to do before we leave New Zealand.
SUNDAY - The calming qualities of swimming with Dolphins.
We were up early and after some thinking time about the weather we decided to go for it and booked ourselves onto the King’s dolphin’s boat tour for $89. At 9:30am we boarded the boat and set sail out into the Bay of Islands and the grey skies. We approached one pod of dolphin’s that had a baby Dolphin with them, which meant we couldn’t swim with them, but they are still so cool to watch as they swim around the boat. We were there for quite a while watching and photographing the graceful animals. The skipper then said we were to move on the ‘Hole in the rock’ another sight to be seen within the Bay of Islands. As the boat increased in speed and the wake picked up at the back
of the boat I made my way to the seating at the back of the boat I watched a Dolphin speed along in the wake the suddenly out of nowhere it leaped 6/7ft out of the water about 10ft away from my head splashing back into the sea. I was in complete shock and in awe of its beauty and classic dolphin form. I quickly grabbed my video camera only to catch the last milliseconds of another dolphin’s leap a bit further away; I guess the sight I saw will have to be kept in my head, as it was truly spectacular!!!!
They soon left us and disappeared into the distance.
We got to the hole in the rock which was quite impressive and then headed to a beach as the sun came out for lunch - guess what… cheese sandwiches, woo! We made friends with a Canadian guy and we all stripped to our boardies and dived into the chilly sea.
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All along the journey Matt and I kept being photographed by a group of young Chinese tourist girls, completely randomly and whenever they felt like it, which we were quite confused about, but being our naturally
The hole in the rock
very clever whoever came up with that name! camera-shy selves didn’t disappoint them.
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On the beach the Chinese girls couldn’t help resist getting a picture of themselves with me, which I thought was hilarious.
We then boarded the boat again and headed towards another pod of dolphins, which the skipper heard didn’t have any young with them and that we’d be able to swim with them. Something we’d been told we only had a 60% chance of doing on any trip.
We chased towards the pod and the crew opened out a large net at the side of the boat which we then jumped into in our wetsuits. The water was absolutely freezing but intent on swimming with such intriguing and stunning animals I braved the pain of the cold. We waited while the skipper got to a good place then donned my snorkel and mask as he told us to swim. My head was under the water for only a couple of seconds when a huge bottlenose dolphin was right beneath me and I swam along next to it for a few seconds before it beat me for pace. I swam out further towards the fins of the animals and found myself surrounded by
3 or 4 dolphins as I dived down and gaped once again in awe of something so amazing. The pod didn’t hang around for too long before we were gathered back into the net shaking and beginning to not enjoy cold water. We headed back towards them and then after a wait we were told to swim out again and once again I was swimming along with 2 dolphins on my left swimming around each other and another on my right looking so calmly at me. If it were any other fish that was such as size I would have been very scared, but for some reason I found nothing scary about these beautiful creatures.
Once again the dolphins left us and we were brought back to the boat where I was quick to get on board and under the hot shower to try and recover my blue, shaking, freezing body from the cold. It took a while for me to get my colour back as we chatted about the experience on the way back to Paihia.
MONDAY - To the North…
We left Paihia in the morning in the rain towards Cape Reinga, the most northern
point in New Zealand. On the way we passed Golden bay and Cape Bay where from the road we saw a pod of dolphin fins in the waves at shore, so parked up for further investigation, once again able to enjoy watching the sea dwellers on the colourful shelly beach. Then much to our surprise the heavens opened and I mean really opened like buckets of water rather than drops of water and I found myself drenched running back the van. My jeans, my only pair of trousers were soaked so I had to strip to my boardies for the rest of the journey.
We drove through some insane weather conditions, from sun to hail, to strong winds, to torrential rain until we eventually reached Cape Reinga. The wind at the top of the head land was some of the strongest wind I have ever experienced but we braved it anyway, Matt and I in our boardies, towards the lighthouse at the end of a short track. Next to the lighthouse was a signpost that pointed to a number of different places in the world. I stood on headland where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean which was exceedingly
windy.
After photo’s and enjoyment of the wind we hopped back in the van and headed down the west side of the peninsula stopping by some farm land for sleep.
TUESDAY - Toilet art in a strange little town…
We drove to a small town called Kawakawa where I’d read about some of the most photographed toilets in the world, designed by an Austrian artist called Hundertwasser. We chilled in the town for a little while to charge my camera and photograph these random strangely decorated public toilets. We then moved on closer towards Auckland in order to hand back our home to EZY Rentals the following day.
WEDNESDAY - Stripping of all her vanity and handing her back.
Back to Auckland we booked into Auckland Central Backpackers after our last night in the picturesque setting of a church car park, where we also had to strip VANity of her decorations, which became a much harder task than we had anticipated. Some of the electrical tape left long sticky lines which were so difficult to get off; we ended up being there for over 2 hours trying to clean her. We did the best
we could?!
After checking in and un-packing the van I drove the van back to the EZY branch where we got our battle plan together for the variety of problems we’d had with each van. We drove into the car park and a French guy who worked there came over and said “I saw this one on Sunday… It looked pretty different then?!!” laughing. Haha!
We were directed to speak one of the GM’s of EZY who was a very helpful guy and was understanding of our complaints. He came back to say that we’d get 4 days refund for the days we’d lost and was very apologetic to our cause. Sadly we now had to pay New Zealand road tax, judged on how many miles we traveled, which meant we actually still owed them money - $72, as our road tax was $220 owed and we were owed $160 as a refund.
We then went to Victoria market to try and get some NZ souvenirs, but found it pretty poor so headed into the city for a browse.
We reminisced of our adventures in the van with a beer in the hostel bar.
THURSDAY - Our
last day ashore the land of the long white cloud.
Our next stop is Fiji, but we had nothing planned so we spent most of the day speaking to a very helpful girl on the travel desk at the hostel who eventually got us all booked up and ready for 2 and half weeks of island hopping and sun, wooo!!!
I also shopped stocking up on toiletries as I think Wollies will be few on remote paradise islands.
New Zealand has treated me fantastically well and I’ve done things here I never imagined I’d be able to do from Bungy jumping, to swimming with Dolphins, to skydiving, to singing and dancing with happy hippies and snowboarding, all of which have been incredible in their own right.
I’ve certainly been able to cross off a while host of ‘things to do before I die’. All in all a huge thumbs up to this fascinating country gifted with the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen. Only downer would be the strange little hick towns that seem to be plagued with boy racers, which is a shame.
Thankyou New Zealand… another country dominated and completed on the big world tour.
I’m now ready for sun, sea and sand and get a tan again whilst chilling on paradise islands……… to be continued, who knows when as internet is not very frequent in Fiji I’ve heard. I’m going back to pen and paper for a while and then I’ll write it all up on here.
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Mum
non-member comment
Hey Brutus
Oh you handsome devil!! If Brutus Gold sees you looking like this, he will be getting you up dancing on the stage with Andy and not doing videos for him, especially if he reads about the new dancing skills you've learnt from the hippies!! Ha!