Magical bay of islands adventures

Myself and Liv, my friend from the coach yesterday, headed out in search of water activities on the bay. Because I had a repeat trip on the dolphin cruise on stand by, we decided to try that in the morning...but they sold out, so instead we deferred that until the afternoon and went in search of kayaks. We hired a double kayak and set out on the lovely sunny sea to find islands. Upon the advice of the kayak hire man we first went across to a bay on the other side that you can do a five minute walk from to a view point. This was a good plan as it had very lovely views. Technically it was an island that we had landed on, although the tide was low enough that it appeared to be attached to the main land. It was rather unfortunate timing as we approached the main land, as there were some waves coming across from a boat. For some reason we thought it would be fun to stay in the water while the waves passed, but because we were right at the beach the waves just broke over the boat, and we got rather wet! Oops! We pulled the boat up high enough on the shore to make sure the tide didn't come up and strand us whilst we looked at the view. Then we returned to the boats for more island hunting, and stopped off at two or three other bays to explore and photograph. Then it was back to the mainland for lunch, and to board our dolphin cruise.

We hadn't been travelling long this time when we found dolphins! Hurray! There was a pod of 6 or 7, and they came over to say hello. Unlike the ones I saw way back in Akaroa, these were the larger species of bottlenose dolphins. They were so graceful and effortless as they swirled round the boat. There were a lot of people on board so sometimes you had to wait patiently for the dolphins to come back in to view, as you couldn't see from all sides due to the numbers of other people trying to see. It was very exciting. We might have been allowed to swim, but the waters were too shallow for the boat to easily move around so it was deemed not safe on this occasion. After a while we moved on to see more islands and search for more marine life. We found a rock (not an island, for an island has vegetation on it apparently!) that had four seals on it, basking in the sun. And later we saw one solitary dolphin, but the best sighting had been the first. We did get treated to a drive through the 'hole in the rock', which marked the furthest point in the journey. I didn't think the driver was going to attempt it due to the swell of the the ocean (I think the tide was higher than on my first trip), but we did, and it was most exciting, as the hole in said rock (this rock actually being an island, not a rock, for it has vegetation on it...confusing!!) is not all that much larger than the boat!

Turns out that they didn't see any dolphins on the morning cruise, so we were lucky to not have got on to that one! :-)

When back in Paihia, I decided to have a swim (cold, but not too bad!), then some food and an evening walk along the beach. Glad I decided to stay here an extra night! its much nicer than being in a city!