Woke up at 8 today and drove to the dive area early in the morning while darius and jojo were still in bed! :D managed to find the dive place by 9 after asking the peeps from dive tutukaka (and omg those direct competitors are really friendly people!) and got our wetsuits and gear (7mm wet suits is damn zai) andden soon we went over to the yatch and took a 45mins boat ride to poor knights! :D
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| view from my window - very awesome! |
( photos taken with my point & shoot in a $10 waterproof casing! )
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| ready to dive in! |
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| some kayaks! would have gone kayaking during the break if not for the cold windddd |
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| our dive master |
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| our gear! |
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| welcome to poor knights! |
And soon we were all geared up and ready for our first dive! And to be frank I was really nervous – the dives at aur were almost painful and definitely not very enjoyable and so I was quite afraid I wouldn’t be able to equalize and descent fast enough. And the worst was the water was at 17 degrees celcius! Goshhhh. Comparing to aur which was 28 degrees, plus the cold canyoning experience just two days ago, it’s really pretty scary.
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| gearing up! |
But the dive turned out to be pretty good! I was a little too heavily weighted so I kept sinking and had trouble with my buoyancy, but we managed to get to see quite some stuff! Herny spotted a stingray but I somehow didn’t get to see it while I was there -___- roars. But saw a few other things here and there and plus the visibility was very awesome! But the scary part was keeping buoyant, I even ascended all the way to the top once and had to descent back down :/ and even scarier was herny and daryl were far below and swimming really quickly and so I was quite tired finning already.
And in the end my oxygen used up super quickly and we had to stop after 35 minutes. Once we were oin the surface, I was super reliefed but super tired, but amazingly not that cold! Hehhh. Swam back to the boat and started on our surface interval, with two cups of instant soup, some cookies and some gums. It was super cold after a while with the wind blowing and the rain falling, and plus we were driving around poor knights looking at the volcanic isles and even going through a cave! Super shiok.
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| beautiful waters |
After an hour twenty, we started gearing up for our second dive and this time I removed another weight and after that the buoyancy was so much better! :D :D I could finally focus on the dive itself, and not to forget, the second dive site is three degrees warmer and damn pretty! We swam into a cave (with the surface still within the cave so perfectly safe) and even had to use a torch to see the stuff running underground! There were schools of fishes andden many things crawling on the seabed (I suspect its crayfish but we can’t see much) and it was dark and scary but super nice! And what was the most amazing part was went we turned around to the other side, and OMG SO AWESOME.
Its like the cave walls around your sides, deep blue waters in front with boulders full of seaweed and corals, visibility that is probably at least 50m, and schools of fishes around you and even nice white sand! :D just exactly like what we saw in the pictures! Super dreamy (: (: I was so in awe that I almost screamed into my regulator. And the experience of swimming next to the fishes was like WOAHHHHH.
And we continued swimming on and saw super a lot of things, like many sea urchins, red snapper, moray eel, and the LOBSTERRRRRR. And the lobster super cute! :D just pops his head out with the feelers and looking at you with that earnest looking black beady eyes lol. Loved it! Eventually we swam until herny was only left with 40 psi (I was left with 20 the previous dive!) and ascended near the boat. And when I came up all I could scream was AWESOMEEEEEE.
Seriously a super good dive! And with this I’m now a much more confident diver and ready to explore more sites (: and all those paranoia and reluctance to dive is now converted to enthusiasm and passion (: wooooots.
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| thats the location of our 2nd dive! |
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| very very happy after our dive! |
Changed out quickly into my wellington marathon tee and track pants then drank some hot milo andden rested! Waited for the other couple and soon we were back on our 45 minutes drive back to mainland new Zealand.
By the time we reached shore, we got daryl to sign our log books and rushed to our dearest campervan and omg jojo and darius were damn awesome they were all ready to feed us with warm soup, awesome chilli cabbage with carrots and nice sausages with potato and rice!!! :D :D lovesssss. Now I know why husbands want their wives at home so after a tiring day they get nice warm fuzzy food to fill their stomachs hahaha. Now I need to learn to cook well.
And so now I’m typing this while being on the campervan for our 400km journey from tutukaka to rotorua, for our zorbing tomorrow afternoon and white water rafting two days later and skydiving three days later! :D goshhh. It’s gonna be an exciting 3 days ahead! (:
Oh yes, one last thing before I sign off, darius is joining us for skydiving! I’M DAMN PROUD OF HIM. :D
(continued later) drove a total of 330km tonight, and stayed up all the way while the other three took turns to drive. Darius drove the last 120km, with the very last 50km focused on trying to find a good camping ground while being on our way to rotorua nonetheless. Super hard to find!
And so eventually when we somehow found a carpark with a public toilet near a ulu park at Cambridge town, we fasted set up the tables and cooked a simple dinner of pasta with cream sauce, and almost immediately I fell asleep after dinner and the rest of the three washed up and even set up the bed hahaha. Felt like a pig but was seriously tired after that long journey. O.o
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