Leaving New Zealand

This will be my last post from Aotearoa - The Land of the Long White Cloud - as I fly to Fiji in a few hours. I've had a fantastic time here and done so much and the last 2 days were no exception. Yesterday I was up in Paihia staying in the Bay of Islands. This is a collection of 144 natural islands that are incredibly scenic. My reason for being there was to dive the wreck of the old Greenpeace Ship The Rainbow Warrior. It was sunk in 1985 by the French government as Greenpeace were protesting against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The wreck was dragged up to the north and sunk so that it could be dived on.

I'd never done a wreck dive before, so I was not really sure what to expect. It tottally blew me away. I never really saw the point of diving sunken boats, but it's a really spooky and impressive sight. The colours of the anemones on the side of the boat were amazing, all sorts of pinks and blues. We even went inside the boat where we found a pocket of air at the roof of the room and we took our regulators out and had a conversation 20 metres underwater. I was down there for about 40 minutes and saw so many fish it was amazing. For our second dive we dove "The Tunnels" which is a reef further out from the Warrior. I got pretty lucky here as when I got down I didn't quite get my buoyancy right and I plummetted to the ground. My divemaster started pointing to my hand and sitting about 3 inches away was a pissed off looking Scorpion Fish. I've never moved so fast! We swam around some tunnels and inbetween some tight squeezes where we were lucky enough to see a manta ray. I had 2 great dives and I keep remembering why I love it so much, apparently there are loads of wrecks of the English coast and I'm starting to think I should look into diving them. We were also lucky enough to see dolphins (again) on the boat out there. They must like me :)

This morning I did my 4th and final bungy jump of this trip of off the Auckland Harbour Bridge. I opted for a harness jump again and ran off into a somersault. I can't describe how cool it was! I really enjoy bouncing around on a rubber band over a huge drop. Sorry for the crap photo, but nevermind. Next stop... Fiji.