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| View from up Tutukaka heads |
I was excited to come back to Tutukaka, we had visited earlier in the year to do our advanced scuba course and while it was amazing diving at Poor Knights Islands it was a bit chilly being July and winter in NZ. Subsequently we couldn't sail past without doing a trip to Poor Knights again. My parents who live in Rotorua said they would come up and visit for the weekend so we decided to come into the marina for a few days to clean up and enjoy the area.
We booked in for a couple of dives with
Dive! Tutukaka, while I realise we are on a boat and its only about 2 hours for us to get out there ourselves, and we have all our own gear and compressor etc we decided it would be easier to go out with them for the day. They know all the good spots, you don't need to worry about dealing with anchoring, if the boat is safe while your down etc etc etc.. soooo we booked in with them. We had gone out with them back in July of 2014 for our advanced open waters and loved it so it was a bit of a no brainer to go out again. We headed to sign in at the office in the morning to sign all the necessary forms then went back to Dulcinea to grab our gear and put it on the boat (we had been placed on the same dock about 3 boats down from the dive boat, so it was very convenient). Before long we were on our way out to Poor Knights Islands, YAY!
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| Stingray having a snooze |
Poor Knights is a marine and nature reserve (and is well on the way to becoming a World Heritage Site). The islands have an abundant population above and below the water of unique and varied plant, animal and fish life. It is definitely a must dive area if you are a diver and find yourself in New Zealand. Poor Knights lies close to the continental shelf and the EAC (seen Finding Nemo anyone?) or the East Australian Current. This current is what helps deliver a lot of the varied tropical life to the islands, that you otherwise wouldn't see in New Zealand, this paired with the warmer waters at the islands means the tropical visitors now live with the locals amongst the kelp forests and rocky reefs.
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| Scorpion Fish |
Anyway as I was saying we headed to Poor Knights, we were sitting next to an American couple that were out here for a week, he was speaking at a conference and she was making the most of her husband being sent to somewhere cool! We were busy telling them how excited we were to be diving here in summer and its actually going to be warm and they informed us it was much to cold for them still and they would be diving in dry suits! The water was about 19 degrees Celsius which to us South Islanders seemed tropical! Before long we had been called up to the top deck of the boat for the safety briefing and island history. We decided to do a guided dive, our guide was Marion and we got paired up with the American couple, we kitted up did our checks and jumped on in. We did two dives
Middle Arch and Bradys Corner, first up was Middle Arch. It was a great dive with amazing visibility we headed through the arch (depth about 15m) and into a Bernies Cave where we surfaced at 8m below the surface into an air pocket, we got to take our regs out and have a quick chat while still being at 8m below the surface - such a cool experience. We saw stingrays, loads of nudibranchs and huge amounts of schooling fish. One of our group chomped through her air and got sent up early, her buddy followed about 5 minutes later and I was about 5 minutes after that at about 40 minutes. Owen had obviously grown gills and was down for nearly 1 hour, Marion and him went looking for Nudibranch to take photos of.
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| Tambja Nudibranch and nudibranch eggs |
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| Clown Nudibranch |
Back on board El Tigre we had a spot of lunch and moved over to Bradys Corner and Meditation Wall, Marion gave me some tips to help with my buoyancy and ultimately my air consumption. This was a nice easy dive that you could make as shallow or deep as you wanted, you could hug the wall and keep in the shallows or head down for the sandy patches at 30m. We saw quite a few huge stingrays, loads of scorpion fish, nudibranchs as well as trevelli, blue mao mao and all the usual customers! There was a cool cave Marion took us into that you could look up and see fresh water sitting on the top of the ocean. I felt heaps better about my buoyancy on this dive and managed to get another 10 minutes out of my tank as was down for 52 minutes, while the other couple headed up at 30. We got back to Tutukaka about 3.30 - 4pm and cleaned up all our gear, had a chat to a couple of the Dive! Tutukaka staff that recognised us from our last visit (Jo and Dave).
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| Emma checking someones anchor - not very well set buddy! Hope you have someone on board watching! |
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| Sneaky little Eel |
Mum and Dad arrived the next afternoon, we had a quiet day just cleaning up and finally fixing that damn hole in the dinghy until they got into town. We headed up to the local pizza place and got a drink and some dinner and caught up. I wasn't sure how they would go with staying on a boat but I was impressed they gave it a shot! In the morning we did a spot of shopping in the local shops, dad got a tee shirt and some sanuk shoes and mum got a lightweight throw over top. Now they felt suitably kitted up we took a sail out to Poor Knights, we may even stay out there a night if it was still enough. Heading out it was clear it wasn't as calm as we would have hoped, I felt a little shonky and quiet, Dad was green! He managed all the way out there and then had a nap and seemed a lot better. Mum decided she wanted to have a snorkel so we kitted her up in a 3mm wetsuit, mask, snorkel and fins and she jumped in with me right beside her. Mum gave it a good go, but from going from not snorkeling since she was in her 20s to jumping in the water with nothing much to hold onto and 25m below it was a bit daunting, she had a swim round the boat, saw a couple of huge king fish and climbed back aboard to hang out with Dad. They said they would be happy hanging up on deck for an hour so we took the chance to have another dive. We didn't have the confidence to anchor as close in as the dive boats did, but we knew we had stopped close to Meditation Corner and The Gardens so we set off to have a look around. The dive wasn't as good as the ones a couple of days ago, I think we didn't quite have our spot right - I guess that's why you go with the professionals, they really know where to take you. But the dive was still fun and had amazing visibility we saw heaps of king fish, snapper and trevelli. (All our pictures from diving the Poor Knights are
here if you would like to have a look!)
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| Matapouri Beach |
We decided we would go back into the marina for the night and go for a drive around the bays for a look around. I had heard that Matapouri was a nice spot, so we jumped in Mum and Dads car and went for a drive. I'd like to take a moment to say it was odd being back in a car after over 3 weeks of boat and foot travel being our only source of transportation! We made it round to Matapouri and walked down onto the beach, it was lovely, the sort of beach you could imaging having summer beach holidays with your family. We decided to go to Snapper Rock for dinner, it was really good last time we had been there, this time while it was still OK we felt the standard wasn't as great it was like there was more effort put into the huge portion rather than the flavour? Feeling full we headed back to the boat to watch Taken 2 (Mum and Dad wanted to go see Taken 3 and the cinema but hadn't seen the second one yet and luckily we had it aboard!)
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| Mum and Dad at Matapouri Beach |
Mum and Dad headed off the next morning, it was great to see them and have visitors come and hang out for a few days!
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