Bay of Islands

In an earlier post, I suggested that there were hundreds of islands in the Bay of Islands. Today I learned I was mistaken. There are only 144 islands. We took a boat tour of the islands, though obviously not all of them.

For the past week, the weather has just been “okay”. Today, it was perfect. (Thank you Heather!) Clear skies, warm temperatures, and amazing colours, on the islands, and the sea.

There are so many islands that you can get views of islands, between the gaps in other islands. Some of the islands allow you to anchor your boat and camp. If you have a boat in New Zealand, that is. Damn!

The highlight of the tour was a visit to “Hole in the Rock”, which is exactly what it says it is.

Someone asked if our boat would fit through the hole, and the skipper said “just”. If the tide, the currents and the swell were just right, we could go through the hole. Today, everything was right and we went through.

To give you some perspective, here is our boat.

There were several interesting perspectives as we sailed around the rock. In this shot, the island looks like an elephant.

Further along, you could see a lady’s face in profile.

One of the features of these tours, is the possibility of seeing local sea life. We came across fish “schooling” where they basically swarmed and broke the surface. Very cool.

We also saw New Zealand fur seals, sunning on the rocks. Apparently they hunt at night, and during the day they nap in the sun. A bit like me.

But the star attraction were the dolphins. In Deep Water Cove we came across a pod of bottlenose dolphins. The skipper estimated there were upwards of 50 dolphins, playing around our boat. Sometimes, very near the boat. Here are a sampling of the pictures I took.

We took the tour with our friends, Heather and Larry, who we met on a river cruise in Europe. They also joined us in Italy last fall, and we met up again this year in New Zealand.