Rainbow Warrior

In 1985 Greenpeace's 'Rainbow Warrior' was moored in Auckland Harbour, preparing to sail as part of flotilla to protest against French nuclear testing in their pacific atolls. The French took exception to this and sunk the ship in what was supposed to be a covert operation, albeit right there in Auckland Harbour. One of Greenpeace's photographers, Fernando Pereira, lost his life.

I won't go into the details further, as if you're interested you can find out more on the Internet. However, after a couple of years the ship was eventually laid to rest further up the coast off Matauri Bay. The purpose of this was to create an artificial reef for marine life (in keeping with the theme she was due to protest on) and to provide a dive site, wrecks often becoming such havens for fish, coral and kelp and hence being popular with scuba divers.

That's the background. The relevance is that for this reason, I decided to extend my stay in Paihia, it being a base from which dive trips go to the Rainbow Warrior. My thinking was that it could be some time before I was back in New Zealand, and I might regret it if I didn't take the opportunity to do this dive. So that's what I did, I dived to the wreck of the Rainbow Warrior, and I'm very glad that I did. There are some photos on Facebook. If you'd like to take a look, send me your email address and I'll get Facebook to send you the link.

Avian Assault

How was your Christmas Day? Mine started in an unusual fashion, almost acquiring a broken finger courtesy of a grumpy parrot at the hostel I was staying at. (Perhaps he would later be visited by a ghost showing him a vision of what Christmas future would be like if he kept assualting the guests?) The bird in question also gave rise to the name of the hostel, The Pickled Parrot (in Paihia, Bay of Islands), on account of him helping himself to people's drinks! I can assure you he didn't get any of mine though!

Thankfully the day only got better from there. The hostel laid on a free bacon and eggs brunch with bucks fizz. Quite a change from the usual Christmas fayre (which I did miss!) but it went down very well, especially since it was a lovely warm sunny day so we ate outside.

Later in the day, we played cricket on the beach. The pace of the game got progressively slower not just due to tiring players but due to the tide. Since it was coming in, more and more of the 'field' was in the sea, slowing down those players unfortunate to turn up in their swimming costumes and hence ending up having to swim out to fetch the ball.

So that was my Christmas Day. Very different, and certainly one that will stick in the memory as being so.