Whangarei

So this blog is going to be a little short, but I wanted to complete my series of three before we left for the south island...

So Friday after we finished our day of snorkeling on Friday, we drove back into Whangarei which is the closest, largest town to the Poor Knights. We drove around the city looking for our hostel, finally drove up a HUGE hill to get there, and got settled in. After we were all organized we went into the town to get some pizza. Throughout this entire semester everyone has been craving pizza...so we all decided to splurge.

All of us at our pizza dinner!

After dinner we went to the one bar we had been hearing so much about...Danger Danger. Let me tell you, this was one of the funniest bars I've ever walked into. It had a cowboy/western theme with the huge wooden tables, but then a dance floor with cages and stripper poles. It was quite the experience. Also, the only reason they let us in was because we came so early, we were clearly out of dress code. Because none of us had anything to wear we were in shorts and tee-shirts, but I guess you had to be in heels/dresses to be considered acceptable. We have now encountered a dress code problem twice...

After the club we all went back to the hostel and went to bed. The next morning we went out to breakfast and a bunch of people left to go camping and hiking in a Kauri forest. I stayed because Jesse and I had made plans to go SCUBA diving on Sunday at the Poor Knights. So Saturday we spent wandering the town, going into gift shops, used book stores, and camping stores. Those of us that stayed decided we were going to make dinner at the hostel that night, so we went to the grocery store and prepared our chicken breast, grilled veggie, and pasta dinner. Afterwards we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and reading. Cooking dinner was actually really fun, except the stove couldn't get hot enough to boil all the water we needed for the pasta, so we served it a la dent. Once we finished dinner we all decided to go into town and see a movie. Emily, Katie and I decided to go see He's Just Not That Into You. Definitely a good movie...although slightly overwhelming. (not sure if thats just the movie...or the fact I've been removed from American culture for 6 weeks). But it was really nice to go see a movie, and I think its fun to explore what movie theaters are like in different countries.

It was good we had a relaxing evening because Jesse and I woke up at about 6:15 to eat breakfast and get ready for our day of SCUBA diving!! We weren't sure if it was going to happen because the predicted weather for the weekend was pretty bad, but luckily it all worked out! By the time we got back to Poor Knights it was probably already 10 o'clock and we had a really hard time finding a protected area to do our first dive. While the weather wasn't that bad, the currents around the islands were really strong. So eventually we come to this area, where every other dive company is trying to dive also, and gear up for our first dive. There were only 4 of us diving, Jesse and me, and two Japanese girls, plus the dive leader. Even though the numbers were small, this turned out to be one of the most hectic dives I've ever been on. One of the Japanese girls knew what she was doing, but her friend had just been certified days before, and basically had no idea what she was doing. She couldn't figure out how to get herself down, so once the instructor helped her, she was just sitting at the bottom. It was like she forgot that she had to swim in order to dive...so the entire dive she was pulled by the leader, she wasn't even kicking her legs. So this incident alone made the dive a little crazy, but minus that the views were amazing. We saw so many different species of fish, a HUGE moray eel, and probably 5 eagle rays. After we finished we came back on the boat and went to a new dive site. Once the Japanese girls came out of the water, they both kind of gave up...they took off all their gear and just slept of the front of the boat. So the next dive was just Jesse, me and the leader which was soooo much better. This dive was really cool because we went through little underwater passages and caves. Again we saw so many different species of fish, really cool sea slugs (they don't actually look like slugs) and an enormous eagle ray, it was probably 6 feet across. While slightly scary, it was amazing.

After we got back into Whangarei, an hour later then we were supposed to, we met up with the others that stayed and started our drive home. It was definitely an exhausting, but very rewarding day. I'm so happy we got the chance to dive at Poor Knights because its acclaimed as one of the top 10 dive sites in the world.

So thats my final story for this past weekend...this week has just been filled with studying and paper writing, nothing to exciting. But in about an hour and a half we are leaving to start our south island adventure!! I'll try and keep notes while I'm there so I remember to update on everything, but I will be out of email/internet contact for the next three weeks. So I hope everyone has a good couple of weeks, and I will update soon! Miss you all!!

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY DAD!!! love you!