Sailing!

Thankfully it was a beautiful, sunny day when we woke up since were very excited for our day of sailing. We put our packs in the trunk of the car, left it parked at the hostel so that we wouldn't have to worry about it and walked down to the harbor. Our sailboat could fit up to 20 people but luckily there were only 8 of us plus the captain on the tour. Aboard the boat there were two older couples who mostly kept to themselves, as well as a guy from Germany and a girl who worked at our hostel. The captain brought the boat out using the motor until we reached the bay where the wind picked up. Then he showed us how to pull up the sails and gave each of us a task. It was exciting to get both the sails up and see how fast the wind could pull us. The captain also let us take turns driving. I had been on a sailboat once before but it was Alyssa's first time so she was excited to try.

As we sailed, we kept an eye out for dolphins and penguins. Finally, we spotted a whole group of dolphins and followed them around for a while. The captain said they responded if you yelled to them, so we all yelled and made high pitched noises and they did come right over to us. They were jumping and chasing each other through the water which was really fun to watch.

We cruised around for a few hours on the way to one of the islands. There are 144 islands in the Bay of Islands, only 3 of which are inhabited. We were going to an uninhibited one to hike to the top. There was supposed to be an amazing view of the water and surrounding islands. Once we arrived, Alyssa, the girl from our hostel and I took the kayaks out to explore some of the caves on the side of the island. We didn't find much, but kayaking is always a good time regardless.

We met the other people on shore (they came over in a little boat) and hiked barefoot up the grassy mountain. The view of the water and the other islands was unbelievably beautiful! I could not believe the color of the water. I could have stared at it for hours.

We hiked back down to the bottom and since I had brought my mask and snorkel with me, I snorkeled around the island for a while. The water was pretty cold but after a while I got used to it. I was surprised how few fish I saw. The ones I did see were about 3ft long and just sort of sat on the ocean floor. The reef was also pretty barren, with no real color to it. Since I wasn't seeing much of anything, I headed back around the island and met up with everyone else who had decided to swim back to the sailboat.
Our captain had prepared a delicious lunch for us and we ate it while sunning on the deck. We then sailed the few ours back to town, most of us lying on the front of the boat taking in the view.

Once we were back, we disembarked and said goodbye to everyone. Alyssa and I then made our way back to the car and began our drive south. We wanted to be in Waitomo to go to the glow worm caves the following day, but since it was a 5 hour drive to get there and it was already after 4:00pm, we knew that there wouldn't be any hostels open for us to stay in by the time we arrived.

We passed through Auckland on our drive and it was funny how much we recognized even from being there just a few days. We drove down to Hamilton, which was only a hour away from Waitomo and were able to find a YWCA that was open late and would rent us a room. I had never been inside YMCA or YWCA but it was exactly like being back in my college dorm. Since Alyssa never stayed in a dorm in college, she was taken aback by the set up. But we weren't about to be picky since I thought there was a good chance we could have had to sleep in the car. We got some cereal at the grocery store down the street (so that we could eat it for dinner and breakfast the following day) and called it an early night.

Posted with Blogsy