Day 131 Pahia, New Zealand

Monday 17th October 2005

14.11.05 22 °C

Today turned into probably one of the best days so far. If not on the whole trip but definitely in New Zealand. We were heading out on a boat trip to hopefully swim with some dolphins if we could find some but also it was going to be a great day to kick back and relax for the day.
We walked down to the harbour and caught the boat at 9.15am and luckily there was only going to be 5 of us on the boat so it wasn’t going to be crowded and full of idiots making loads of noise. We picked the other couple up from the next island who were an elderly couple and very nice and then headed off to find some dolphins. We came across 2 boats who had crowds of mainly kids swimming around with about 6 dolphins so we waited around about 10 minutes and luckily for us they all disappeared so it was our chance to hopefully swim with them. Three of us (Simon, myself and this older guy) all got some wetsuits on and got into the water. Dolphins are the type of animals that one minute they will happily swim with you and the next minute swim off and disappear. The idea is to talk to them and actually swim towards them rather than just float in the water. The hard part though is swimming with flippers on and a snorkel for the first time and also in the sea when your not really a strong swimmer. Trying to swim after the dolphins then nearly killed me and after a few minutes I was shattered although I did manage to get very close to the dolphins and got a chance to get some fantastic views of them under the water.
After that we got back onto the boat we headed over to one of the islands and swim from the boat to the beach where we went for a short walk while the hosts got the barbecue fired up. An hour later we got back onto the boat and had some food and relaxed with a well earned beer before starting the journey back to our hostel.
The bonus was on the way back first we managed to spot about another 8 dolphins swimming around and further along we saw 2 seals which is pretty rare to see swimming out in the sea.
Anyway eventually we made it back to the harbour around 4pm and it was a fantastic day and even better thanks to the 2 people who were in charge of the boat.

Reece's Photos 2 201.jpg
Bay of Islands