We woke up at 6am in Auckland and drove very fast to the Coromandel Peninsula. Poor Mum and Dad it was 4am Australian time for them! I thought I wasn’t going to make it in time for diving when we got behind a road repair truck going at 40K! We pulled up to the dive shop and I jumped out with my kit bag and threw the car keys at Mum and Dad and said – be back for 4:30pm.

My kit was already soaking as when I went through customs at Auckland airport I had to answer yes to having dive kit and it was still wet from Sydney so they had to take it through bio security and put it in bleach to remove any pathogens that could invade NZ from Australia via my dive kit. They fully soaked my dry suit etc. and handed it back to me in a plastic bag which was heavy with water still coming out of the kit. We loaded up into the dive boat and I realized in my haste that I was wearing my flip flops and had forgotten socks and also my poly pro under shirt – I was going to be cold. Oh well.

We did a deep wall dive which dropped to 95 feet. As we were entering the water there were dolphins playing around the boat and we dropped into the depths and saw schools of kingfish, leatherheads etc. We caught one legal crayfish on the first dive. After an hour or so surface interval and lunch of a cup of soup – I hadn’t had time on the manic drive from Auckland to either eat breakfast or grab something for lunch – we did a shallower dive. This was a different landscape completely it was a boulder field with lots of moguls to make your way around and lots of places for crayfish to hide – we caught another here. One of the other divers got 7 in total so between the boat there was a total of 10 caught not bad with a value of $50 each! Dad was beaming when he picked me up to find I had dinner to cook on the BBQ.

After diving I stuffed myself at the bakery and we headed to the beach where we took a walk and relaxed in the sun. It really was a beautiful landscape.

Dinner was the crayfish on the BBQ and we were treated to a beautiful sunset.