Rainbow Warrior

Internet cafes are a challenge. The coin operated ones are the worst. $2 for 20 or 25 mins and then the screen goes black right in the middle of the email you are writing. I am in Auckland now and you pay for what you use but the first PC had internet explorer in Chinese and this one has the blog site in German - arrrggh.

Advanced Open Water Course at Poor Knights
The plan was that I would do the course on Sat and Sun and then take the bus to Waitangi on Sunday night to see the Waitangi (New Zealand Day) celebrations on Monday. Waitangi Day celbrates the signing of the treaty between the Maori chiefs and the Queen's representative James Busby in 1840. About 25,000 people go there to see the celebration, part of which involves the launch of a big Maori war canoe (waka) which only happens once a year. Also part of the celebrations seem to involve pelting the Prime Minister (or any government representative who is brave enough to turn up as the PM doesn't go now) with eggs in protest against the unfair interpretation of the treaty. You can just imagine a document written by a bunch of Whitehall civil servants, it must be so full of vague language and loopholes that its no wonder people complain. Apparently the Maori chiefs thought they were getting a good deal at the time but things haven't quite turned out as good as they thought (hey - what's new?).

Anyway when I turned up at the dive centre, my instructor wanted to see my dive medical which was in Cairns and involved several phone calls to get it faxed through so I lost a day and missed the celebration. The owner of the dive centre was really nice though, he let me go out round the islands on the jet boat tour for free.

The owners of my hostel were wonderful and couldn't go enough to help me. They booked my accommodation at Paihia and booked my dive at the Rainbow Warrior and then they changed that and also changed my bus reservation when everything got put back. Noel took me to the woods to see the glow worms along the river at night. They are tiny worms that look light christmas fairy lights in the dark. We saw a freshwater crayfish and an ugly big brown grasshopper type thing that lives in caves and is a rare species (can't remember what its called but Noel was really excited about seeing it).

Quite a few people at the hostel were diving and Noel wakes you at 6:30 to get ready for the shuttle bus pick up at 7:10. Why do all outdoor sporting type things start so early in the morning? Honestly now I feel that I've had a long lie in if I get up at 8am. I was the only person doing the advanced course which was super duper not having to share the time of my instructor with seven other people :-) It was so different from Cairns, I was really surprised for one thing the water was colder and totally took my breath away when I got in. Also, I had a thicker wet suit and that made it a bit more difficult to control my buoyancy, this was a good thing really as its the area I most needed to work on. On the second dive, John (instructor) got me to take off some weight, then he said, let the air out of your BCD and see what happens. Well, that was a big lesson in buoyancy because I sank like a stone. I just expected that I would float but I wasn't looking at my depth and and once you start to go down there is an acceleration effect which is really dangerous if you don't control it. I realised that something was wrong when I couldn't see him anymore, I slowed down and he caught up with me at 12m. Ok, so now I go down really slowly and in a controlled way every time and watch my depth gauge all the time because it is really hard to tell what your depth is once you are under the water.

Someone once told me that he suffered from vertigo until he learnt how to control his buoyancy and it made no sense to me at the time but I can understand it now because sometimes you look down and there is nothing but darkness below you but you don't fall, you just stay there suspended, its really cool. That is the best part because if you can stay still without floating about up or down then you can watch the fish and the tiny sea creatures. If you are always moving about you don't see the stuff around you and you scare off the fish. But believe me the hardest thing to do is to stay still, I'm getting better at it but my god you would think it would be easy but no.

I tried taking some photos with the basic film camera that the dive centre supplied but that is even harder. Once you are able to keep still, then you have to look through the viewfinder while wearing a mask, try to get enough light in the shot, don't blow bubbles into the picture and hope the fish are still around by that time. Some of the best pictures I have seen are of things that don't move like anemones or sponges which are really colourful and make good photos. There was a lovely Japanese girl in my hostel and she had fabulous pictures she had taken in Okinawa of schools of fish.

On the last evening at Whangarei, we all watched a film in the sitting room and Noel need a big bowl of popcorn for everyone. She is so kind. I cooked corn on the cob for dinner and believe me, it tastes nothing like this in England, you are not talking about the same thing, in England there is no favour compared to this.

Next day I caught the bus an hour North to Paihia to see the Rainbow Warrior. I really wanted to see this because I remember all the fuss in the news when it was sunk by the French and at the time I never thought I would see it so it was a real thrill for me to go down and swim around the wreck. Its a bit rusty now but its also covered in all sorts of life, anemones, sponges, shellfish and there are lots of fish and eels and crayfish swimming around and through it. When you go into the lounge, there are so many fish trying to cram in there that they're spilling out of the door, its like a really popular fish party is going on in there. When you leave it and ascend it disappears into the darkness like that scene in Titanic, really, its sooo cool.

Someone brought two sea urchins back up to the boat and I was a bit shocked partly because most of the time I've been diving in Marine Reserves were you will get fined for doing that but also, I just could not bear to watch the little things dying in front of my eyes so I threw them over the side. Then when I got off the boat I went and bought fish and chips which was totally delicious (yes but its different if you don't have to see it die in front of you).

At the hostel I was sharing a room with Pauline a nurse from Peterborough and also Saito from the hostel in Whangarei was in the same room. About 1am this guy came back and he must have had a drink, he feel asleep and my god could he snore and not just that but he had really really smelly feet. First Saito went out of the room, then I went out and at 2am, all three of us were outside in the lounge and snoring man was the only one in the room. It was so funny, we laughed so much, it was so loud, you could hear it from outside the room. Pauline went back in and woke him up so he stopped for a bit but Saito and I just slept outside. Next day Pauline and I went on a guided trip to Cape Reigna, the northernmost point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and they crash together in waves. I cannot say in words how beautiful it is. Cape Reigna is a sacred place to the Maori, it is the place where the spirits of the dead leave NZ to make the journey home, you are not allowed to eat or drink in sacred places. We drove along 90 mile beach which is actually 64 miles long and when the tide goes out the "road" is about 20 metres wide. Its too dangerous to swim in because of the tides but its popular for kite fishing which means that you have a fishing line suspended from a kite 2km offshore. We saw a little blue penguin which was washed up on the shore, we tried to put it back in the sea twice but it was either too tired to swim or we weren't able to put it out far enough to avoid the waves so in the end we had to leave it to its fate.

The guide told us that sheep are not such a big thing now in NZ since the Chinese got into the wool market and started depressing the price of wool. There are now 48m sheep in NZ compared to 78m a few years ago. The big thing now is dairy farming, NZ milk is the cheapest in the world. Possums are a big problem for agriculture and the government are using a lethal poison called 1080 to wipe them out. This thing is so bad that only three countries in the world will use it, sounds pretty bad to me and not only for the possums but maybe for other things as well. The living Kauri trees are protected but you can buy lots of lovely wood things made from ancient Kauri found buried in swamp forests that are 30/50,000 years old. Its a hard wood so the furniture looks beautiful but its really expensive.