An Underwater Forest and Warm Waterslides

We leisurely walked from our van to the dive boat in the same marina on Tuesday morning for our 8am dive departure.  It was with a small company called Knight Divers and there were only 6 of us diving, as well as 2 dive masters, so it made for a nice and personal dive experience.

It was a chilly and choppy 45 min ride out to the Poor Knights islands, which are a protected island reserve where they are breeding huge crickets (9inches long) and lizards.  It also means that no one can go ashore or they get a huge fine.  The islands were basically huge rock faces with crevices, arches and caves and we even drove the boat into the largest cave called Ricoh cave.  The skipper blew the boat's horn and it made a loud reverberating echo in the cavern. Very neat!  Apparently its also a good dive site but not that day, due to choppy waters. The pic below is an English couple (we only dove with Brits), and the skipper is describing Rikoriko cave, which is the largest cave in the world.  During World War II, a Japanese submarine tucked itself away in this cave for two weeks whilst undergoing repairs.

We found our first dive spot next to a large arch called middle arch. And when we got to the side of the arch's wall we saw literally an underwater forest!  There were swaying plants everywhere and a myriad of fish, especially blue ones.  What we liked best about this wall/reef is that ith was like a little mountain underneath, with lots of levels to swim through and around.  The cool bit was a cave (about 50ft under) that we went into that had an air pocket at the top of it where we could remove our regulators and chat as a group.  Syd says that he saw three huge sting rays on this dive and they looked really majestic, but I didn't see any - boo!

After a 1 hr rest stop we went on a second dive on the other side of the island which was similar to the first one - except there was a crack that we could swim into called 'Mac's crack' where there were loads of fish.  Syd came face to face with a stingray here, but again I missed it!  Ah well. Good times anyway.

After having a much needed lunch at the end of the trip and a hot shower in the marina, we headed back south to camp for the night.  On the way we stopped at some falls near the highway called Whangarei falls.  Nice picture opp.  Plus a chance to visit an orchard nearby and get fresh fruit and sweet corn!

  We drove on the west coast to our motorpark campground and the views on this side of the northland were stunning.  Syd got a sweet shot from a lookout site.

We stayed in a park with thermal hot pools that night. It was called Parakai Springs Aquatic Park and it had public pools (half price for campers) and even waterslides!  The pools were heated with geothermal water from natural springs and were really warm.  The indoor pool was almost unbearable for Syd (wuss!) at 38C, and the outdoor pool was a cool 32C. ;o)  The most fun part is that there were WARM waterslides too! Two big ones that Syd and I ran continuously up and up and up and raced each other down.  The water actually rushed quite fast inside the tubes and I almost flew off my mat upside down a couple times!  The best part about it is that the water was warm, as usually the most unpleasant aspect of waterslides back home is initially sitting down in the frigid cold water to start the slide. These slides alone made the entry fee worth it (but not bad at $8 each). ;o)  Our campsite was powered so we finally go to use our appliances such as our fridge and kettle - and most essentially, we could charge our dead laptop so we could write this blog! 

Astrid.