A Perfect Day! (RV Day 5)

April 18

Bandit called today and told us he missed his mom and dad! He looks so sad. We told him we’ll be home soon. Another four weeks to go! I can’t believe we’ve been here for over 3 months. Wow time flies!

We woke up a bit late today but still had a wonderful view from the RV windows after the sunrise.

I was really excited about our Perfect Day snorkeling tour to Poor Knights Island, 14 miles off the coast of Tutukaka. They set the bar high with a tour with that name and I was hopeful it would live up to it.

We parked our RV and checked in at the office in the marina. The weather report showed calm seas and light wind. Yay! I shouldn’t have any sickness issues they told me. I’m wearing my watch just in case.

The tour can take 75 people, but today we lucked out as there were only 16 people on board.

Darren was our hilarious, yet informative skipper, his first day back on the boat as skipper in three years. He only fills in when the team is away on vacation. Arlo, Noah, Bella, and Billy rounded out the crew and they took great care of us.

There are several theories as to how the island got its name. One theory is that it’s named after a fallen knight. You can see that the island looks like a fallen knight from a distance.

Another is that it’s named after poor knight pudding, a resemblance to French toast. In either case, Poor Knights Island is comprised of two main islands and 24 smaller inlets. It is a fully protected marine and nature reserve of eroded remnants from a four million year old volcano. There’s a hefty fine if you land on the island, which was once home to the Māori Ngatiwai tribe. The islands are now considered tapu or sacred.

There are amazing insects on the island, including the world’s largest weta, aka the God of all things ugly, and 1,000 massive lizards called tuataras, meaning “peaks on the back.”

These lizards burrow in the soil nests that 2.5 million Buller Shearwater seabirds dig for them. The birds breed exclusively on Poor Knights and lay their eggs before their big migration to the North Pacific Ocean where they congregate along oceanic currents east of Japan and sometimes fly as far as the North American Coast.

While they are away for their long migration, the tuatara lay their own eggs in these nests and look after their eggs and the Buller Shearwater’s eggs as well, keeping them all warm. It’s a cool and unique symbiotic relationship.

The plants on the island have gigantism, meaning their leaves are broader and larger than their mainland counterparts.

The boat ride out to the island took about 45 minutes. True to the reports at the office, the seas were in our favor with 1-2 foot swells. When we arrived we pulled on our wetsuits, stepped into our flippers, grabbed our snorkel and mask and headed for the back of the boat.

One by one we jumped into the water. It was a little chilly but not horrible, thanks to the insulation of our wetsuits. Mitch and I chose to snorkel with a pool noodle as we learned to do in Hawaii. We expend less energy swimming around and it helps to keep us afloat.

We saw an amazing variety of tropical fish, sea and plant life the moment we stepped into the clear water. Schools of blue maomao, huge snapper, red moki, mado, trevally and sea urchin were just a few of the 100 plus species of fish that can be found there. We explored sea caves, walls and arches.

The islands are influenced by the East Australian Current, or EAC, bringing abundant sea life to the area. Jacques Cousteau ranked Poor Knights as one of the top 10 dive sights in the world and it was a pretty awesome snorkel spot as well.

After a few hours of snorkeling, we were famished, so we got out of the water and had something to eat on the boat.

When our time was up in the water, we got back on the boat and Darren drove us into Rikoriko (“dancing light”) cave, the largest sea cave in the world with the most amazing acoustics. In May 2010, a 49-foot dead sperm whale washed into the cave. Its jawbone still remains at the bottom inside the cave.

We drove around Poor Knights Island and in and out of other caves and under archways, some of the largest sea arches in the world.

We left Poor Knights and headed over to the Pinnacle Islands and Sugarloaf Rock. At Sugarloaf, we saw two fur seals, a school of trevally, two whaler sharks and a gannet colony.

Every spring, the birds return to the islands from North America to their only nesting site in the world. There’s estimated to be 100,000 breeding pairs of gannets.

On our ride back to the mainland, when everyone on the boat was quiet and sleepy from our day in the water, Darren spotted a pod of bottlenose dolphins. They swam alongside the boat for several minutes, to the delight of the passengers and crew aboard.

It was a perfect ending to a perfect day on the water, thus living up to the tour company’s name.

Eager to find a place to sleep that night, we climbed back into Harmony and drove north to freedom camp at Woolleys Bay. All of the spots were occupied and as we decided what to do, a guy came up to our RV and said we could park outside the accepted overnight boundaries since it was off season and they weren’t patrolling anymore. We didn’t want to get fined, but we also didn’t know where else to go, so we parked in a great secluded spot and hoped he was right. We were half expecting to hear someone tapping on our door at 2 a.m. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.