Bay of Islands
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2007
1
137
188
Trip End
Jan 08, 2008
Paihia,
New Zealand
Thursday, November 1, 2007
I had a miniature panic when I saw the bus drive right past my collection point and called the office to make sure I was indeed on the list of collections, but no worries, the driver had just decided on an alternate collection route, so I did not get missed, I was jsut last rather than second. It was a nice small group, so we had plenty of space in the minivan, and we had a few stops to make along the way. The first was at a baby kauri tree for a sopt of tree hugging. By baby, I mean that this tree was only six hundred years old, rather than the 2000yrs of the Granddaddy on Kauri trees which lives on Cape Reinga. For a baby, it was huge, though the perspective as we drove up made it appear deceptively small. It quickly became clear how big the tree was however when you got close to it, not only because I was dwarfed by it, but because my hug could be in no way described as all embracing, not reaching around an eighth of the girth of the trunk. I felt both silly and inexplicably warm as I hugged the tree (the Maori believe it will bring good fortune) but it was a good feeling and I was glad I had not been too restrained to do it.
We carried on, with brief stops here and there, the only other one of note being a stop at toilets with a difference. A dutch artist had been given opportunity to give these toilets a makeover, and he had produced a facility that embodied particularly Guadi-esque undertones. These commodes would not have been out of place in Parc Guell, and the broken and sculpted tiles, and pieces of glass and bottle came together to produce a convienience of surprising beauty. I was not sure of the concept of putting bottles in the partition between cubicles though - you could not see trough them, but the idea of a transulcent wall in the cubicle was a little unsettling. The gate to the toilets was wrought out of cast off steel and iron that had tarnished to a rust colour. I think that these loos surpass even the singing loos in Hamilton, though I am not sure what to make of a country that puts so much emphasis on novelty toilets, or myself for finding such a fact entertaining.
We arrived in Paihia shortly after leaving the toilet stop, with ample time before the dolphin cruise. I din't do much with the time, just checked a few shops for a shirt, without any luck. The free cruise was actually quite a decent freebie as it lasted for three hours We were introduced to several islands in the bay, though not all 144. Some of the islands here are privately owned and feature amazing houses and holiday cottages or guesthouses in addition to the main residence.
About half an hour into the cruise we were radioed by other operators to a dolphin site, so we detoured off track to go and see them. It turned out to be a pod of mothers and infants, and as in my last encounter, it was the babies in the group who were most inquisitive and playful in regard to the boat, though one or two of the adults came by for a look. Apparently the curiosity of an infant can be the death of it, as they need to feed every three minutes from their mother when young in order to regulate their body temperature. If they do not do this they can go into hypothermic shock and die, which is very stressful for the mother, who will carry the dead baby on her nose until it disintegrates. It is a good reason not to swim with the nursery pods, though not the only reason.
We watched the dolphins for a while before heading out to the outer edge of the bay and the Hole in the Rock. It took surprisingly little time to get there, and we found that the Hole in the Rock is aptly named. It is a big archway in the volcanic rock of the outermost island, and it was big enough to drive te boat through and spin it around inside (though apparently one boat crashed recently while performing this trick.) On the far side there were masses of juvenile fish making the water appear to boil with the amount of activity at the surface. It was a peculiar sight. We were also introduced to the Guardian of the Rock, which was a far more convincing likeness of humanity than Hei's nose in the Coromandel. This island, was ceremonial for the Maori, they used to make young warriors climb it as a rite of passage.
We rounded the island and took a last look at the Cape Brett Lighthouse, which is no longer active, before heading back into the bay. We stopped briefly to admire a decomissioned naval vessel that was going to become an artificial reef the next saturday. Someone has spent $20000 to push the button. I wish I had 20k to waste on sinking a ship. I spent much of the journey back snoozing in the sun and as a result have a white patch around one of my eyes from my sunglasses (I don'y know why it didn't happen on both) so from now on just call me Patch. I did not do much in the evening, just curled up in the Chalet - my dorm at the YHA, a small portacabin mocked up as a chalet. It had a strange assortment of beds ranging in height from the ground, which were quite haphazard. I liked it, although the beds were narrow. I went to bed early - there is not much to do in Paihia in the evening.
