From diving at Poor Knights island to madness in Tokyo

The diving at Poor Knights island was amazing!

I had 2 dives, 1 at Cream Garden and 1 at Blue Maomao Arch.

This is what Blue Maomao Arch looked like.
(picture from a homepage)











The dives were amazing, the way the light of the sun illuminated the centre of the arch through a hole in the rock was incredible... as I swam through it second time I looked back and saw the illuminated spot, the hundreds of travellies swimming around and in the background the sillouettes of the kelp. Wauw!

When we came out of the arch again we swam into some great nature pools. That was quite fun because the surf pulled you in to the pool and you had to fight alot to get out again.

The Poor Knights island is today a nature reserve, but Maories used to live there. The story goes that a chief from the island gathered his men and went to the mainland to plunder... while he was gone another tribe from the mainland were informed by a spy and came to kill all the women and children left behind. Since then the island has been deserted.

After this great experience I went back to Auckland for my flight to Tokyo.

Tokyo is very hot compared to NZ, there is a constant humidity that makes the heat unbearable sometimes... thank God for aircon :)

I stayed a couple of days in Tokyo hostel which I googled. I went to Asakusa with some english guys which is the old part of Tokyo with a nice temple and a great pagoda. Later to Akihabara which is a giant electronics market... oh my buddha it was large... 7 floors of electronics in all the buildings, and alot of Manga! Motoo my colleague from AJN called it the Mecca of Manga :D
I bought an underwater casing for my camera! So next time I go diving you will see underwater pictures :D

Yesterday I met two danish girls from Oesterbro :) We went around sightseeing and shopping, that was quite nice. Really weird to speak danish again... the last Dane I met was more than a month ago in Auckland.

Today I wanna go to the botanical garden and maybe the Tokyo tower. :)

Northland!

Hey!

I've been so busy the last couple of weeks that I forgot all about my blogger!

After Dunedin I went back to Christchurch where it was the towns 150 years birthday. I went to the cinema and saw " The Da Vinci Code"... it's an OK movie I think, despite that I've only heard bad critics... but all the exciting scenes from the book are kinda boring in this movie and alot of clues get lost in the confusement.

After Christchurch I took a train to Picton and a ferry to Wellington (on the north island).
Wellington is the capital of NZ. I arranged my Magic bus tour on the northland and went to the "Te papa" the national museum.
From wellington I went to Napier... kinda boring because I had booked myself on a hostel where only 1 other person went...
After Napier I went to Taupo, on the bus I got to talk with a group of British people Marc (Bingerz), Amy, Robyn, Elizabeth (Liz, Irish), Nathalie, Andy and a canadian girl called Cheryl.
I spent the rest of my time i Northland with them and had a great time!
I went skydiving with Liz, Robyn and an italian guy called Stephano in Taupo... It was absolutely crazy! I LOOOVE FREEFALL :D
The next morning I did a bungy in Taupo as well... and I hit the water!

Then we went to Rotorua with the magic bus. It was crazy driving in to the town... there were big emmisions of steam coming from the soil everywhere.... and in the town there was a great fog and a constant smell of rotten eggs. We went to see the Thermal Wonderland... you need to see the pictures... it was beautiful!
We had rented a car and were driving around in the area. In our hostel they had a thermally heated swimmingpool, so we spent a couple of hours in there every night!
The first night I went to the Maiti show with some of the girls. It was great! We saw the Maori's do the Haka and there was a buffet with Hangi (maori tradition, underground BBQ).
The next evening it was Robyn's birthday and we went partying in the local bar!
Then we went to Auckland and hired a car once again!
We drove the car up to Paiha and a friend of Marc's (Claire) joined in. From Paiha some of us took a tour up to Cape Reigna the next day, which was a really good trip! On the way back they dropped me off at Whangarei. In Whangarei I did some tramping up to the amazing waterfall. The next day I went diving at the Poor Knight's island which is according to Jacques Costeau one of the top 10 best diving spots in the world!
It was absolutely amazingly fantastic! (even the american exagerated words don't describe it well enough) :)

Now I'm back in Auckland and just chilling at the Fat Camel (my hostel).
Tomorrow morning I'm off to Tokyo!