World Cruise - Day 36 - Feb 17 - Bay of Islands, New Zealand

I got distracted this morning from my sunrise shots by all of the dolphins as we sailed into Bay of Islands:

I snapped the photo above in very low light (before the sun was up) and continued to shoot new photos as the dolphins played alongside our ship:

There were probably about 5-6 dolphins, although the most I saw at any point was two above water, so maybe more like 3-4?

As you can probably guess, I took about 100 photos and these were the best ones.  I also cropped them in to just the dolphins so that you could see them well, although they were very close, within 100 feet or so.

I like the photo above, I got that one all the way out of the water.

Above is my best photo of more than one surfacing together.

The landscape here is very surreal.  Krissie commented that Brandon would love it here, that it reminds her of Lord of the Rings “when everyone is happy.”

Lots of low lying clouds and mist as the sun was coming up.  Not the most spectacular sunrise, but the rugged landscape and mist made it that much more special:

It seemed like the sun hung out behind the hills in the distance for a long time, providing that cloud lining for quite awhile:

The scenery here is beautiful:

Not sure yet what we will be doing today, for now we are just getting out and exploring.  We have to tender to the dock, then take a shuttle bus into town.  From there we will figure out our day.

We tendered into an area near Waitanga, then took a bus into town in Paihia.  Here is a view of our ship as we went ashore:

I can see that I’ll need to use smaller pic sizes to get all the pics into the blog in one posting.  Susie, you asked for pics of some of the vendors, so I took a few today:

The vendor above was selling all sorts of hats.  They set up an outdoor market in Paihia, which is the gateway town for where we tendered in today.

Most of the vendors were artists with their own creations, this one made necklaces.

This vendor sold carved New Zealand jade.  You can see a big piece of jade in the left of the photo above.

I love this photo.  One of the vendors was showing me a local katydid on a magnifying glass and it caught the smile of the lady next to her.

We signed up for a jet boat tour, then sat on the pier for awhile.  I caught this photo of a seagull with the boat (in red) we would be taking in the background.

Krissie and I went out in the morning on “Mack Attack,” a high speed jet boat that we took out to the Hole in the Wall (rock arch).

The scenery in this area is quite beautiful, similar to the Pacific Northwest, although more islands, similar to the San Juan Islands.

You can see the spray from the jet boat on the left side of this pic.  The boat would do about 40 knots (about 48 MPH).  Everyone wore rain jackets due to the spray.

There are 144 islands in the Bay of Islands.

The sky was a beautiful blue all day, combined with the blue of the water.

This was our main stop at Hole in the Wall rock formation, which is a natural rock arch.

Not only a natural rock arch, but we actually took the jet boat directly through the opening.

Can you see the fish in the water?  For some reason, they surface very near the arch while feeding.

There is also a natural cave that we went into with the jet boat.

Looking through the arch.

Do you see the woman’s face in the rock facing?

Here is a closer up view.  Like many such formations, when you got nearer to it, the illusion disappeared, it has to be seen from just the right angle.

The nearby lighthouse is perched 500 feet above the water.

On our way back to Paihia.

Some people went kayaking in the area surrounding Paihia.

In the afternoon, we took the local ferry over to Russell, formerly known as Kororareka.

The views were spectacular all day.

This is the entry into the port at Russell.

There were more vendors in Russell.  The one above was selling pewter sculptures embedded in stone.

These were all hand-made bowls.

Do you see the bird?  He was taking a dust bath when I snapped this pic.

Krissie replenished some of her painting supplies, including more white acrylic and more white watercolor paint, at this store.

Back in Paihia, I liked this stone entryway into this building complex.

One last photo of the scenery and beautiful cloud formations as we make our way back to the ship.

I saw our jet boat (Mack Attack) later in the day back onboard the ship.

Tomorrow is Auckland, New Zealand.