Not swimming with dolphins and more diving

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Dolphins

Dolphins2

So after a day of caving where we went 1.5km down into a cave pushing and dragging oursleves through tiny holes, mud and streams, which was great craic. There were a few older women about 45 or 50 with us and all they did was complain they couldnt do anything....what the hell they were doing down here i had no idea but they didnt spoil it for us as we just went on without them and left the poor guide to deal with them.
Next stop was the very north of New Zealand to the bay of islands. Here we chilled out at a nice little hostel and booked a swim with the local dolphins in the bay. So up early the next morning we jump onto the boat and head out. After about 1.5 hours we finally find a pod and we all make a move to get into our swimming trunks (whish i wasnt looking forward to coz the water looked feckin freezing) until the guide told us we couldnt get in as they were feeding and moving to fast(yeah right as if i couldnt keep up with a few dolphins ha!). We decided to move on to look
coming out of the cave
for other pods but not a dickie did we see for the next 2 hours. Apart from 5 minutes of seeing of dolphins it was 4 hours of boredom and lying around. We did though get tickets to come back whenever we wanted and try again.
This just happened to be the next morning when we headed off again. This time we spotted 2 pod but they had young babies so we were not allowed get in...another 4 hours of sheer boredom driving around a bay.....sigh.
Feck that it was time to get wet again so we headed off to the Poor Knights diving sight about 100km south of bay of islands. This is one of the top 10 dive sights in the world they told us(arent they all). We head out on a huge dive but to the sight. Now the main different between here and the barrier reef or thailand is the water temperature.....absolutely freezing!!! We had to wear extra thick and hooded dive suits for this dive which in fairness probably kept us alive which was nice. The dive though was, i have to admit, pretty spectacular. It was complete different corral to what i was used
caving
to in the warm waters with alot of sea weed and kelp which were life amazing underwater gardens. As you swam through the kelp you were met by all sorts of fish and sting rays. There were a few caves to explore aswell which was pretty exciting. God diving is so addictive!
The north of NZ was very beautiful and very hilly and even if we didnt swim with dolphins we had a great 3 or 4 days up there.

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