Cruising the Bay Islands

Hello again. It is about 0800 am Saturday, March 10.

We are getting ready for our golf game and I'm taking a few minutes to start the blog about Friday's tour around the Bay Islands. There is 144 separate islands in the area, many  with historical significance. One of them was where Captain Cook first met the Maori people for the first time.

I can't say let alone spell most of the names of the islands we went by but the notable island is the Hole in the Rock one...where I took the most pictures of.

We started off  at 0900 am from the dock area. Naomi and I headed to the top deck, the weather was great and our guide advised slapping on the sunscreen. So here we go:


Up on the sundeck 
Heading over to Russell to pick up a few more tourists. Russell is part of the mainland but it takes 1.5 hrs to drive there and twenty minutes by boat



Some of the competition

These are New Zealand bottle-nosed Dolphins, possibly the largest of their species with Orca being the largest


Captain Cook Bay. This is where he first made contact with the Maori, and began a very up and down relationship that possibly still exists today

This plaque was placed to commemorate that first meeting

If you look closely you can see a house there. Captain Cook's ship the Endeavor fired one cannonball over the heads of some attacking Maori. A few years ago the caretaker of the house was building a retaining wall in the back and found that cannonball. It now sits in the Museum on the Treaty grounds



Can you see the lighthouse in the distance? It was manned up till 1978 by 3 lightkeepers. Our guide said that 15 kids were raised on that island

And here is our final destination...Hole in the Rock Island.

Yes, that is our competition going through.....we are next
That other boat is fishing for Kingfish that hang out at the Hole



Can we fit!!!

Selfie time




Careful...those walls look awful close...


Look up....way up!

Whew..we made it with inches to spare....actually more than that but the Captain said "not bad for my first time through, eh"

Any one see a Mastadon in this shot? Kinda reminds me of that fellow from the animated Ice Age movie

Over on the other side of the island you can see the start of another arch. There is a huge fissure in the Rock and that is the erosion slowly works it's way through.....give it another few hundred years or so




Slow ahead please!

Now we are right in the rock hollow

Hard to see in this shot but the surface is teeming with these fish that are filter feeding...these are what the Kingfish are after

The Naomi's Lady of the Sea. She looks due North and legend says she helped guide the original travelers to the island from lands far to the East


Belly Button Island

If you look closely you can see a Grey fur seal sunning himself. They are slowly making a comeback

This island is where we had a great BBQ lunch





On our way back. The tour boat made a stop at Russell with the option of taking the ferry back to our starting point so we got off and explored the waterfront for a bit.






When Captain Cook made it back to England he told of seeing so many whales and seals in the Bay that you could walk across it on their backs. That then started a huge whaling and sealing industry and Russell became the whaling capital of the South Pacific. It quickly became notorious for it's bars and brothels. The Missionarys in the area called it the Hell Hole.


Interior shot of the ferry going across the Bay from Russell
I thought I had a shot of the exterior of the shuttle I guess not.
Goodbye

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