Down Under Episode 5: Robbe's version of the truth
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
EDIT: Mickis photos are up. My AWESOME dive photos from TAKA are up, more coming tomorrow :)
Hello and greetings from a cold hostel in New Zealand.
I know you are all desperate to know what happened when Micki and I finally parted ways so here comes my version of the events that transpired during the 24th to the 29th of April plus a little from what happened after that.
Once in Cairns we spent the day doing some general errands as well as returning our War God (our campervan). It was really hard to say good bye but fortunately we had already booked a new “spaceship” for New Zealand. On the 24th I got on board the Taka, a diving vessel that would take me out for 4 days worth of diving! Super! We zoomed up north from Cairns to Cod Hole, a site known for large Potato Cod (weighing about 80-100kg each). We had two dives there, one of which was a Cod feed. Aside from the Cod we also saw plenty of White Tip Reef Sharks, which was an added bonus. The second and third dives where at Pixie Pinnacle and the Clam Gardens. We saw more sharks, Lionfish, Moray Eels and plenty of... you guessed it … Giant Clams!
With day 1 done it was time to really get into Sharks! During the night we zoomed out to Osprey Reef (famous for … lots and lots of sharks!) The first dive we saw at least 10 White Tip Reef Sharks, about 5 Grey Whalers (Grey Reef Sharks) and some Black Tip Reef sharks, all of them between 1,5 and 3 meters long! The second dive was the shark feed. Basically we all sat along the reef wall 25 meters from a flat rock. From the surface they lowered a large dustbin. Inside the dustbin was about 6 Tuna fish heads on a chain, attached to the bottom of the bin at one end, and to a buoy on the other end. When the lid was opened, out popped the buoy, pulling up the tuna fish heads … cue: feeding frenzy! During the set-up there were plenty of sharks swimming about including some oceanic sharks (4 meter +) in the back ground. Once the dustbin was lowered there were at least 30 sharks, if not 40 swimming around us. It was quit possibly the most intense experience of my life... what followed however would surpass that. After the feed (didn't take too long, as you might expect) we made our way to the reef wall at the far end of the dive site. I was just about to look around the bend when all of a sudden two 4 meter long Oceanic White Tip Sharks glide right by us, about 25 meters away! I froze and just looked at them for a couple of seconds until I remembered my camera! Luckily I got a pretty good photo of them :D
Day 2 was completed with a wall dive along a 1000 meter drop off... that means there is 1000 meters of deep blue sea underneath you and a great night dive where we saw a couple of sharks and some free swimming moray eels. Day 3 just kept right on going along the same lines! Scorpionfish, Lionfish, Giant Clams and some baby sharks... it was like being in heaven, only you have a limited amount of air! We even got to see 2 cuttlefish, which look like mini giant squid. During the second night dive we found a huge turtle that had just settled in for the night. All of this was topped off with more sharks. One of my favorite features of the trip was that we were encouraged to dive without a guide and therefore learned a lot more about underwater navigation and we also saw a lot more. When a group of divers comes along the last people usually miss the good stuff as it has already swam off by the time they roll up.
All good things come to an end and so did our little dive trip. On the 29th we came back to Cairns... absolutely exhausted from all the diving (getting the nitrogen out of your body is like working out). But it was nice to be back on land again. We packed up our things, got down to the airport and hopped on our flight to Christchurch.
New Zealand, what can I say about New Zealand other than that it is the most beautiful place on earth! Snowy mountains, rolling hills and cute villages / towns! We enjoyed a day in Christchurch and then hit the road towards Mt.Cook stopping on the way at the Banks peninsula to do a dolphin spotting trip. We saw several Hector's Dolphins, which are the worlds smallest and rarest dolphins. They were cute as can be and came right up to the boat to have a good look at us. At Mt. Cook we did some tramping (NZ speak for trekking). The scenery was fabulous as you can see from the photos. We then drove back to the coast to Oamaru where we visited a blue penguin colony, the worlds smallest penguins. Seeing the little guys all exit the water at the same time and march up the beach to their borrows was really something (about 30-40 of them). We then drove further down the coast to Dunedin. Dunedin is a really nice city full of nice pubs and nice architecture. There is also a very nice peninsula called the Otago Peninsula where we saw Royal Albatrosses as well as yellow eyed penguins. These guys are a little bit bigger then the blue ones but still very cute. They didn't fall over as much as the blue penguins but they were still fun to see.
The weather has now turned against us, but hopefully it will clear up for tomorrow because thats when we arrive in Queenstown, home of adrenaline. We haven't decided what to do yet (and what to save for the north island) but on the menu there is skydiving, bungy jumping, white water rafting and jet boating down a canyon or two... It gets the pulse racing just thinking about it :D … dear parents, please ignore the last paragraph!
Take care now, bye bye then,
Robbe & Micki
PS. Photos are coming later. In New Zealand as well as Australia internet is not charged by the hour but rather by megabytes so it would cost us a small fortune to upload all our photos :) We will find a by the hour place asap!
Posted byRobbe at 01:24
Helt ofattbart fint måste det vara. Har inga svårigeheter att förstå att det är kononfint att dyka i dom där vattnena. Wow, vilka vyer och upplevelser. som att sitta och titta på en National Geographic film....:o)
NZ ser ut att vara just så vacker som jag gissat. Kanske ett potentiellt resemål i framtiden....
Sen väntar vi ju givetvis på Mickis version ....surfing ? eh ?
Sköt om er önskar
Pappa Jankka