Bay of Islands – Dolphin Spotting - 23rd Nov

Today we took a catamaran boat trip to visit the Bay of Islands and to hopefully swim with dolphins.

The boat left Paihia and we sailed for about two hours to one of the deserted islands. On route we passed some private islands where the Richard Bransons of New Zealand live and heliport in to home. We also saw a baby shark and some blue penguins swimming in the sea but no dolphins.

When we got to the island we were given the option to swim to the shore. We were told it would be “refreshing” so we both thought we'd give it a go and jumped in. “Refreshing” is a very lame term....it was pretty damn cold so we swam quickly. The boat had snorkels which we used but only saw two fish at the most.

We then swam to shore and climbed a hill to look at the view of the Bay of Islands. You can see from the photos how stunning it was.

After an hour the catamaran sent a small speed boat to collect us and we had a bar-b-que on the boat which was delicious.

We then started to sail back to Paihia still not seeing any dolphins. We were told that 80% of the time they see them but things weren't looking good for us as dolphins had been spotted out at sea but not in the Bay.

Then a large cruise ship was seen leaving Paihia harbour and it was thought that the dolphins could be attracted to this so the catamaran started to head over. We then knew we were on to something when we saw at least 4 other speed boats all heading in the same direction.

When we got there it was amazing. There must have been 8 dolphins swimming with all the boats. They were coming right under the catamaran and you could tell they were enjoying playing in the boat's wake. At one point we saw 4 dolphins leap out the water at the same time. They probably swam with us for 10 minutes before getting bored and moving off. We were hoping to get in the water with them but unfortunately we weren't allowed because there was a baby with them.

M25 of Paihia

Back in Paihia we collected the car and caught a car ferry over the bay to a place called Russell. This was a really pretty sea side town. We had a walk around and took in the views before heading back to Paihia for fish and chips on the sea front – beautiful.