Tuesday 8th April and I turn up at Dive Tutakaka on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island for my first of four days diving the Poor Knight Islands, a marine reserve 20km off the coast. The dive operation and boats are great, the divers a mix of just over 20 travellers with a lot of newbies, but I managed to get myself buddied up with a 400 dive veteran, which enabled us to do our own thing and avoid the crowd. The trip over was on flat calm seas, the water gave us 20m of vis and a pleasant 19 degrees. The dives set the scene for the rest of the week with vertical walls, kelp gardens, incredible encrusting life, plenty of fish life and stingrays all over the place. The days dives were at Middle Arch and Nia Reef, the second beeing a particularly spectacular site dropping off to well over 40m and finishing with a wall completely covered in colourful life.

As good as the diving was, the most spectacular site of the day was at lunch and on the way back home. A pod of well over a hundred common and bottlenose dophins, false killer wales and pilot wales leaping from the water and generally having as good a time as us on the boat. Spectacular.