TravelingWebGuy

Lost in the Scene

Pahia is the town I camped out in when I was staying in the Bay of Islands. It’s called the Bay of Islands because in this one bay there is a total of 144 islands and more are still being formed every few years as more and more underwater volcanoes create more islands. I spent a few days here and saw some awesome scenery. I did partake in a scenic boat tour which lasted about 3 hours long. We toured out and did some Dolphin watching as they are very common in this area. We were also given the opportunity to go and swim with the dolphins provided there weren’t any babies in the group. We were also told we were going out to the “Hole in the Rock” which is a cave created by wind and sea water.

About 10 minutes into our trip out to the bay, Dolphins were spotted. The captain turns the boat in the direction, I looked out and saw some fins and water breaking. Sure enough those were the dolphins and a small school of them. There was probably about 6 in this school but shortly after spotting this group, we spotted another larger group of about 12. So in total there was about 20 dolphins swimming within about 10 feet of our boat and then as we inched closer, they started to jump and come splashing about a foot or two off the sides of the boat. Swimming all around and under the boat.

The best photo I could get

Now, of course I was taking photos and trying to get some nice shots of them, but with the time delay my camera has, I was always catching the tail end of their jumps. So then I decided to just starting taking photos of the area they are in and hoping that I will get one where they jump out and I would luckily time my snap with the jump. No such luck. I managed to get 1 photo where a dolphin was just starting to come out of the water, but I have him at the very edge of my frame and only half of this body. It’s the photo here!  Pretty amazing isn’t it? I should quit my day job and become a professional photographer. (And to keep with the Tui beer advertisements here in New Zealand, I’ll use their tag line) Yeah Right!

So since we’ve now spotted the dolphins, the people who opted to go swimming with them wanted to, but then we were told that their was a baby in the school so those people weren’t allowed to. I’m going to do the swimming with Dolphins, but I’m going to do it on the South Island as I was told there is literally 50 dolphins swimming all around. That, to me is a much cooler experience than a few. So  I wasn’t to bummed about missing that opportunity.

Sitting on some Rocks

== Ok, taking a break to go up the cafe car and grab my self an Export Gold beer. – Ok, so they didn’t have an Export Gold so I got the next best thing… No, not a Corona, a Speights Gold Medal Ale! A good beer, blogging, the New Zealand west coast on my left and it’s never ending green hills on my right, and some Johnny Cash, damn what an enjoyable ride. ==

So as I sit here with my Beer and think about what part I want to talk about next, I realize that I will probably need to split these posts up into a few different posts as I have a lot to say and I don’t want to create a scrolling nightmare for you guys. So I’ll stick with the coastal stuff I did and then with another post I’ll talk about the hole in the rock and the awesome Lighthouse I saw on the way out to it.

Natural Beach Spa

One of the other cool things I heard about while in Pahia, was the “hot water beach”. In hearing this term I of course asked what they meant by that and the answer I got back was quite cool! What it is is not really a hot water beach like in Hawaii or somewhere similar, but rather, a person can go out to this beach on low tide and dig themselves a hole in the sand, and in some places, the geothermal activity from the earth heats up the sand and the water that’s above it. So when I dug into the right place, I got myself a nice organic, earth made hot tub! w00t! So I did just that, started digging and sure enough found a hot spot… But hot being the key word! Within a few seconds of more digging the water was boiling hot and there was no way I could continue that spot. So onward hoe to another location, this time deciding to dig a little closer to where other people were digging. I mean hey, they must know what they’re doing or they’re just as newb as I was. Anyways, after trying a second spot and again, it was to hot, I was invited to dig along with another group of people who were pretty close to my age and by the looks of it, they were also all travelers.

SCORE we found a good spot and started to dig away. This spot was  just a bout the perfect spot to be digging and with in a few minutes, we had the outer edge of our “spa” dug and we were starting to dig deeper. After about 20 minutes and a few cave ins later, we called it quits and got our butts wet.

The other people I’m in our “spa” with is Woult(Volt) from Holland, Olly from England, Michelle also from England, and then another American, Heather from Philadelphia. They were traveling on a tour bus called Stray.

And with the Hot Water Beach I’ll end this post and continue another one.

Thanks for reading!