Scuba Diving the Poor Knight Islands!

Hello! I am doing a guest blog swap with Cara. I hope that you enjoy the blog and decide to share it with friends, family, fellow divers, and anyone that you can think of that might be coming to New Zealand. So with out further delay, here is Cara!

Hello everyone! Chris and I are exchanging blog posts for this past weekends adventures! Feel free to check out mine as well (http://assweetasnewzealand-cara.blogspot.com/)!

This past weekend Sean, Chris, and I shared was definitely pretty awesome.  We left Friday afternoon in Scrumpy, our friends’ car. Let me introduce you to scrumpy. She is a mute moss green color, 4 door, itty bitty car complete with lady bug seat covers. There is one power window, one key entry (the other side someone ruined trying to break into her), if you lean on the back right door or sit in the middle seat the interior lights come on, and the back left door doesn’t open at all (that one might have been my fault).  She has personality EVERYWHERE.  We got up there about 11pm, and after a small ordeal at the hostel where we realized we all had no game, headed to bed. I woke up about 5 am the next morning to cow mooing. Never knew those animals were quite so loud. Around 8 we headed to the dive shop.

Saturday was an absolutely perfect day for diving. Not a cloud in the sky, and nice and warm. Its getting to be the end of summer here so I was definitely thankful for the weather! We got geared up, paid, and boarded the boat. It was pretty large dive boat, called Calypso, that took us all out to the islands. It was about a 50 minute boat ride our there which I personally enjoyed as much as the dive its self. I have been absolutely itching to get out on a boat so it was finally great to do so. Plus everything was SO beautiful. 

 

I swear there’s nothing in NZ that isn’t aesthetically pleasing. Once we got out to the islands, we suited up, and got in the water. We soon lost Chris- everyone under water looks pretty similar when you all rent gear from the same company. But we knew he was okay. Down there we saw a couple sting rays, eels, TONS of fish, and these crazy colored slugs. Everything was beautiful. Huge stalks of seaweed, crazy rock formations, and great visibility. After about 55 min, we came up, ate lunch and explored a little bit.

The crew told us a little about the islands, how they might have been named, who used to live on them, etc. They are actually forbidden to step foot on- and if you do its an automatic $500 fine! We also went into the largest sea cave in the world which was cool to be in. Then it was off to the next dive site just a few minutes away. Again, another 55 min dive or so, and saw much of the same things- rays, eels, fish, etc. another awesome dive- I really loved absolutely every second of it. I think this was the most beautiful place ive seen since ive been in New Zealand.

From there we headed home. Its about a 4 hr drive from Tutukaka to Hamilton but took us a little while longer because of 2 food and beer stops.  We were all pretty exhausted, but well worth it after the day we had!