The adventure started sooner than I thought it would, at about 11:00 pm when we were just about 10 minutes away from The Cowshed (backpacker’s lodge where we were staying). We saw a whole bunch of cars parked on the road so we hopped out to see what was up. Apparently, there was about 100 meters of flooding along the road, so the cars couldn’t pass through it. We decided that we wanted to sleep in the beds that we paid for, so we took our pants off (it was dark, don’t worry) and waded through the water, holding our gear over our heads! The water was up to our mid-thighs, and I had the bright idea to put my diving booties on so that I could easily walk through the water. There was literally a river of water flowing through cow pastures, over the road, and down a person’s driveway. I guess they usually didn’t have that problem, except that the moon is so close to the earth right now, and it’s a full moon, which means, spring tides, which are really high high tides and really low low tides. We ended up sleeping in dorm beds (ten people were sleeping in the room I was in, all bunk beds!).
Saturday morning we awoke to have a quick breakfast and we hopped on a boat to go dive the wreck called The Canterbury. It’s an old frigate ship that Northland Dive (the company that also owns the Cowshed) bought the wreck for $1 and spend a long long time cleaning it out and getting permission to sink it. They sunk it three years ago, and it’s currently covered in sea life, and home to a ton of fish. It sits in about 85 feet and we were only able to stay down for about 26 minutes. It’s so cool to look in. If I were a more experienced diver I could have gone inside part of it! There’s also an old phone box that you can open and answer the phone!
After that we had lunch on a beach on one of the islands. It was amazing sandwiches with egg, ham, and cheese, lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, etc. Cut up egg on a sandwich is SO good! Not like egg salad which has a lot of mayo. After lunch we headed over to Potato Island, which is about 45 feet deep. There were a lot of kelp covered rocky boulders to explore. I also saw my first moray eel here and my first white spotted eel as well. Then we came back, washed all of our dive gear, and then I waited in a line for a shower that was probably 10 people long! Two showers for 46 divers was definitely not enough!
Saturday night was the club’s 50th anniversary dinner, complete with tons of wonderful food (including spit-roasted pork) and kumara (local sweet potatoes). I really liked the salad because they put feta cheese in it! Over dinner I also got to know a lot of the older members. Then, all of the members started drinking together, playing games, and they served a cake covered in fondant (edible frosting) sea creatures. It was the coolest cake ever!!
After a pretty late Saturday night, it was up early again to dive on Sunday! We dove south of Motowheke Island and in Whakapae Bay, both of which were dives to about 16 meters deep (about 52 feet). They were dives on the bottom of an island made completely out of volcanic rock, so you jump off of the boat and descend down the anchor line to sand, and going up at an angle is the base of the island. It was SO cool just to poke around in the nooks and crannies and swim through all of the kelp. We saw a yellow spotted boxfish, which I guess are pretty rare around here, as well as a puffer fish, and another moray eel. Diving here is out of this world, with schools of fish swimming by. Visibility underwater wasn’t as great as it could have been, but the diving was great. There was a lot of runoff from the islands, because it poured Friday night and all day Saturday, but it made for some sweet waterfalls down the steep sides of the islands!
I also successfully took my first underwater photos with my new camera (thanks Mom and Dad!). I LOVE my camera- it was so much fun! When you look at the pictures, just pay close attention, chances are there might be a fish that blends in pretty well with the background!
To see the rest of the pictures, go here: http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3345496026/a=5301477026_5301477026/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/
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