Scuba Diving Poor Knights Islands

Hello! I am doing a guest blog swap with Cara. I hope that you enjoy the blog and decide to share it with friends, family, fellow divers, and anyone that you can think of that might be coming to New Zealand. You can find my site at www.adventuresofChrisBlanchard.com, feel free to check it out!

So the day starts out with me finding the exact same bike that I race back home, I knew it was going to be an awesome day. Cara, Sean, and I jump in the car that some people bought nicknamed Scrumpy and head off. We get up around Auckland just to find out that the major highway has been shut down... and they let you know about 5 km before it actually is shut down (this is so New Zealand it is not even funny). grumble grumble grumble.

 In the morning we get up early and head to the dive shop and get geared up and ready to go.

The day is BEAUTIFUL and sunny and middle 70 degrees (Fahrenheit) little or no wind, it could not be a better day. The ride out was really nice and sunny and not wavy (thank the ocean gods). We get all our gear on and jump in the jelly fish infested waters. I have never seen so many jelly fish in one place at one time. I only got stung on my hand once (once again, thank the ocean gods) and we get down to the bottom. At 60 feet (18 meters) down wearing a full wetsuit and mask, everyone looks the same... anyway I end up swimming off with a different group that I thought was my group and lost Cara and the other guy. I love the feeling of scuba diving, it is the rare moments where one can truly feel like they are flying. So fast, so free, so freebird? Anyway you really need to experience it for yourself. We flew around for an hour and saw some really cool local fish and plants. On the surface I reunited with Cara and we had some really yummy and warm instant soup. While we were chowing down on soup and swapping diving stories the dive ship was driven into the worlds largest sea cave; Rikoriko Cave. Check the video out:



The second dive was even more awesome, down there we saw an intensely bright asterodiscus truncatus, flew amongst giant seaweed forests, saw a freaking sweet slug with a Mohawk, a stingray, and a few Moray eels.

All in all a successful trip, and I recommend for you to scuba dive New Zealand. Don't just go with the flow, but flow with the go.
This weekends adventure will be to conquer Mount Taranaki after the fail of a few weeks ago. Wish us luck!













Definitely agree with everything Chris said. It was a great weekend, and absolutely beautiful. Here are a few more pictures from the weekend I really liked.

As for this past weekend, I went on a field trip to one of my classes to Castle Rock. Its an outdoor leadership class, so the trip was pretty suiting. It was also, as usual, unbelievably beautiful.

The rocks themselves look like huge pumice stones, so they are filled with holes and such which is why its such a popular climbing spot. We spent the day abseiling, rock climbing, orienteering, and doing some archery. For any one who likes to rock climb and happens to be in NZ, I highly recommend going here!


Not too crazy of a weekend, but definitely memorable. This weekend marks the start of spring break- where ill be on the south island, scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef, and spending some time in Sydney! have a great week all!