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The Bay

Entry 433, on 2006-11-26 at 22:59:01 (Rating 1, Travel)

Today we took a full day boat trip around the Bay of Islands. We stopped at several of the islands in the area, including Urupukapuka Island at Otehei Bay for lunch. There we also viewed the sea floor and local fish from the "Nautilus" which is effectively a glass-bottomed boat but looks more like a submarine - the passengers are underwater and they provide "realistic" sound effects like sonar - very amusing!

Inside the shelter of the bay the sea was very calm and the weather was pleasantly warm. But then we headed out to the open sea to the highlight of the trip, the Hole in the Rock, which is a 150 meter long hole carved into the solid rock of Motukokako Island. Its big enough for large boats to travel through.

Well as we got out of the shelter of the islands the sea got quite rough and was occasionally washing over the top (third) deck of the boat we were on. A few people got rather sea sick and the whole thing was looking a bit unpleasant. Luckily it was only a 30 to 40 minute trip back into more sheltered waters, so most people treated it as a bit of an adventure. We were on one of the bigger boats that do that trip, so I dread to think what it was like in the smaller ones!

So another day exploring the Bay of Islands was complete and we headed home for a well deserved barbecue dinner!

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