A few people have asked me how my
diving went, so I thought I'd write a little about it here.
I was initially debating not going this weekend, because I was pretty sure we'd have to be up and ready to go by 8am or around there, and I'd not had much sleep the previous few nights due to unpacking things from boxes (boxes, are of course the bane of my existence, and have been for many months now it seems). However, I found out the day before the dive that I wasnt going to be waking up at 8am. Nope. It was a 4am rise for me yesterday so we could make the 2.5 hour drive from Tutakaka, in order to be packed and ready to leave the marine by 8:30. I managed the 4am start reasonably early by not bothering to sleep at all, and we made it to the Marine slightly early. The boat departed on schedule, and the day looked to be pretty good for the occasion. Slightly cloudy, but still sunny enough to make the first entry into the water not too painful for our first dive, which was around 10am.
I'm cursing myself now, but I can't remember the name of the first spot, I'm pretty sure it was "Sand Garden". It was close to a channel between the 2 islands and a sandy (small) beach, however it was awesome. Karl and I started by going in the opposite direction to everyone else, and headed into a corner in the cliff face, where the skipper had told us we'd find plenty of marine life - and we did. I got to see my first Moray Eel, and my first Stingray (an Eagle ray I think), which was huge. Watching the thing glide through the water was pretty amazing, and I can see how this diving thing becomes addictive! In general, the visibility for the day was awesome, at least 20m, but as we got closer to the sandy beach area the surge was making things a bit more clouded with sand. On the whole, plenty of fish about, but the highlights of that dive were seeing 2 rays and the Moray eel.
We moved to a place called Trevors Rocks for the second dive. The spot is aptly named after some rocks that jut slightly above the water, which a guy named Trevor once ran his boat onto. Again, we started away from everyone else, and had an awesome second dive. No more rays or morays, but loads more fish than the first dive, plus the water was much deeper on average, which made it much more enjoyable. Loads of small schools of snapper about, and some of them were pretty damn large. Another cool fish was a type of multicoloured Dartfish (can't remember the exact name), which came up right next to us, and even allowed me to pet it, which I thought was quite weird for a fish.
Before heading home we had a quick tour of Riko Riko cave (which looks like an awesome dive spot), and then headed off home through the Southern Arch.
We dived with Dive Tutakaka, and the boat was skippered by Luke. I definately recommend them, and intend on using them again.