Thanksgiving in NZ

Thanksgiving in New Zealand:

We started with phone calls to each of our folks to wish our families a great Turkey Day. Then we treated ourselves to an ice cream breakfast, and promptly did nothing but sit on the beach & read books, sometimes walking on the beach looking for more shells. For lunch, Eric went out & collected fresh green mussels from the rocks at low tide, and then went snorkeling to find some lobster he could cook up as well. He was successful on the mussels, but no lobster to be found. He cooked & ate the mussels right there & then. Talk about fresh!


It decided to rain on us after that, for an entire 24 hours, the rain continued a downpour, alternating with some crazy blustery wind, with no lightening or thunder or even letting up a little bit. So we spent a very sleepless night in the tent, tried to sleep some in the car, and then gave up & drove north again to Kerikeri. This is another tourist town in the Bay of Islands, where we found a nice winery to tour & taste for the rainy afternoon. We dried our things in a backpackers, and then drove to Tutukaka for the second cold water scuba dive trip we had scheduled, to the Poor Knights Islands.
It was a windy, rough, boat ride out to these large Islands east of the mainland. There are lots of holes in the rocks and cool caves to check out. The acoustics in the “largest surveyed cave in the world” were amazing. Eric saw a short tailed manta ray, two grey moray eels, and was lucky enough to see two rare giant boarfish while diving.

Because of all of the rain, we think we missed seeing the full moon rising over the ocean. However last night we were able to catch a less than full moon rise over the nice campsite we’re at (Waipu Cove) and get some good shots. Hope it comes through in this blog.


We are now slowly working our way back south to Auckland, where we will celebrate Eric’s birthday tomorrow with a proper lobster dinner and a nice room to stay. The next morning we’ll be catching a ferry over to “Great Barrier Island” which is another wildlife reserve type of island that we will camp & travel around for the next few days. These last days before we know we have to leave seem to be flying by at astonishing speed!