an adventure (in grace).: Day 4 - Whangarei to Tutukaka

Thursday, 9 October & Friday, 10 October

We had a short 30+ km ride today from Whangarei to Tutukaka, the next stop. On our way we stopped at the Whangarei Falls - said to be the most photographed falls in NZ.

Tutukaka is a small town (or village?) on the east coast of the northern island. It has a couple restaurants, two diving shops and a marina, and some beautiful houses on the hills. One of those houses belongs to my dear Kiwi friend in PP - Julie's - good friends, Greg and Nicky.

Here's the view from their kitchen...

And from the porch...

Greg and Nicky are awesome. They were so much fun to hang out with and have all kinds of great stories of adventures and travels and just doing cool things - like flying Greg's water plane, scuba diving all over NZ, and biking the Otaga Rail Trail in the south island.

We sat down for tea and scones with them post-peanut butter sandwiches on the road, and Greg started showing us all his cool underwater pics of scuba diving. After awhile, he looked up and said: we can go snorkeling and scuba diving right now if you want!

Now mind you, it was 13 degrees outside (translation: cold), and I was shivering inside the house! But Greg took us to the garage and showed us all the scuba gear, wetsuits, dry suits, oxygen tanks, flippers... So we geared up, hopped in the car and went down to the marina.

Nicky dropped us off and out we went!

We went out to some rocks in the water and snorkeled there for nearly an hour. Greg had his oxygen tank so I swam along side him with the extra mouth piece and did a bit of scuba diving myself!

The next day (Friday, 10 October), we decided to take Greg's advice and do a day trip to the Poor Knight Islands - one of the best places in NZ, and in the world, to dive. Greg packed up all the gear for us and dropped us off in the morning.

It took me some time to gear up and get that wetsuit on...

But when I did it wasn't so bad!! Ok yes, when the water got in the wetsuit it was cold!!!!

We saw all kinds of beautiful fish - most of them tropical (from a jet stream that comes from Australia), sting rays, eels and beautiful colored plants and corals. We even spotted a humpback whale from the boat - the guides were really excited because no one has seen a whale there in over six years!