Paihia Week #2 – Day #1

12/22/07

Today Jenny got here! YAY! We are so excited to have her here. And the weather has really improved too, so it’s going to be a great last 2 weeks. Even though she had been traveling for 24 hours, she was ready to go, so we decided to go get some lunch at a café downtown and then go on a cruise where they take you to see dolphins and then go to the Hole In the Rock (Paul didn’t feel like going so Jenny and I just went).

It was a beautiful sunny day (don’t worry, I put on sunscreen :)) with a little bit of a strong wind, so it was a little choppy out there. I was a little nervous about getting sick (after the whole scuba diving trip craziness) but I ended up being fine. On the way out of the bay, they showed us different islands in the Bay of Islands. There are about 120 islands in the bay, one of which Captain Cook from England set his first anchor at when he was discovering New Zealand after discovering Australia previously.

Everything was really beautiful. Finally we got out to an area where they were seeing a dolphin pod (which is a group of dolphins traveling together). Usually these pods only have about 12-15 dolphins, but this pod had about 50 dolphins! They said that the pod would probably break up in a few days since they usually don’t travel with that many together, but today we got the benefit of having all those dolphins around us. And we were so lucky because the trip that had gone out this morning didn’t see any dolphins!

Dolphins are obviously very smart, and they can tell the difference between boats because of the noise the motor makes, so they get used to the boats that go out there. However, the company we went with (Kings) had just bought the boat we were on, so the dolphins were really curious about it because they had never heard it before. So they were swimming all around our boat! It was so cool! They were doing jumps, sometimes just regular jumps and sometimes they were jumping backwards or sideways, and sometimes 2 of them did several jumps in a row together, even the mommies and babies! These are wild dolphins but they were doing tricks like they had been taught them in Sea World! Amazing. They are just so naturally playful.

They even had some really young babies with them that were so cute. The babies actually have 2 mothers swimming with them, one of which is an Auntie dolphin that takes care of the baby when the mother has to go off to find food. And these dolphins were really big, like 10 feet long! And a couple of the babies were only about 3 feet long. They were too cute.

When the boat started moving faster, the dolphins would get into the boats wake, really close to the boats propellers, and ride the water that was funneling into the middle of the boat, so they were just being pulled along. They absolutely loved it! When we really started getting some speed, a whole bunch of them came into the wake, and they were doing big jumps! It was so cool! Unfortunately, Jenny’s camera had run out of batteries by that time, but I don’t think it would be possible to capture that anyway. Too bad we didn’t have a video camera.

Anyway, after we left the dolphins, we went to the Hole In the Rock, which is a big island rock at the edge of the bay (which feeds into the South Pacific Ocean). On a calm day, the boat could go through the middle of the hole, but today there was a lot of white water in there. A small boat went in and was really being knocked around, even on the other side of the rock, so we were glad we didn’t go through there. The hole was made from the ocean waves pounding against the rock because the rock is really hard but it’s brittle, so it can break off easily. There is another hole that is forming in the other side of the rock, and they said it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a complete hole.

On the way back to the wharf, we saw some other pretty islands, but the dolphins were definitely the highlight. That night we went out to dinner and then just hung out and took it easy. Tomorrow we will plan the rest of our week here. YAY!

Here are the pictures we took on the boat tour: