First off, I apologize for the lack of updates recently. First of all, internet access is spotty at many of the parks where we are camping, and in some, prohibitively expensive. Second, I (Eli) have, as predicted, gotten good and sick. We’ve had to cancel our planned Tongariro Alpine Crossing hike for today, and instead moved our Cook Straight Ferry reservation up to 1PM. We’ll have a relaxing day crossing the straight and driving part-way to the glaciers on the South Island.

Anyhow, the Poor Knights. We went diving with Dive! Tutukaka, which is the largest operation heading out to the Poor Knights. Our group was great, just a captain and 2 crew, with about 12 divers. Several of the divers had big time photography gear with them, which was a first for any of my trips. The first site we headed out to is called “The Tunnel” or the “Eastern Arch”. Its a large archway/tunnel through the island, and had a huge school of pink snapper swimming in the middle of it when we arrived. The diving was fantastic! Tons of snapper, blue and pink mau mau, large short- and long-tailed stingrays, and all sorts of fish were cruising up and down the walls and floor of the tunnel. Once we finished that dive, we had lunch and a cruise about the islands, stopping at the world’s largest sea cave (by volume) Riko Riko Cave. After lunch, we headed out to the Northern Arch for a second dive. Mel and I went out alone this time, and spotted a ton of great sea life. She spotted a Moray Eel hiding in the rocks, and there were bunches of nudibranchs on the vertical walls.

All in all, the Poor Knights was by far the best temperate diving I’ve ever done.  Mel seconds this, emphatically.

We also made friends with a couple from Australia, Nicky and Brian. We spent a bit of time chatting with them afterward, and they provided us with some information about their itinerary. That was immensely helpful, and helped us limit ours to something reasonable.

The Poor Knights themselves were beautiful, rocky islands with all sorts of arches and outcroppings, like the one above. One of our dives was through an arch like this, and in between dives they took us around in the boat to look at the islands themselves while we had our lunch.

We didn’t have an underwater camera, so us on the boat with the islands in the background is the closest we could get.  We’ve got some more pictures which we’ll upload to the photo site later. It was an amazing day!