Bay of Plenty

Day 168

"Dead to the world. Alive for the journey.
One night I dreamt a white rose withering,
a newborn drowning a lifetime loneliness.
I dreamt all my future. Relived my past."

It's funny to look my reflection in the mirror now and then look some of the first pictures I took of myself at the start of the trip. Allthough it's only been about 5.5 months, I look like completely different person. Weirdest thing is my hair which is turning more and more blonde each day. I know that sun can bleach hair but lately it has been accelerating for some reason. Check this out.

Last entry was written on first night in Tauranga and I mentioned how nice that city was. What made it great was it's relaxed and chilled atmosphere and all the nice bars, pubs and restaurants at the Strand, next to harbour. Really nice relaxed atmosphere there with mostly people aged 25 to 35 having cold beer in the sunshine. Food was excellent there as well, 4 cheese woodfire pizza was propably best pizza I have bad during this trip(hehe, haven't had many).

Next day I walked all the way to neighbour town of Mt Maunganui(8km) and then to the 235m hill at the end of the town which is called...Mt Maunganui. Views from up there were quite commanding. It was easy to see twin towns of Tauranga and Mt Maunganui on opposite peninsulas. Anyway, here are some areal views from the summit.

After Tauranga I was off to Whakatane, small township on the eastern Bay Of Plenty. My only reason for going there was White Island. White Island is small active volcano island 50km off the coast. They do 3 different tours to there: one being helicopter ride, second being boat trip with opportunity to walk in the island and the third - and my tour - was dive trip where you can actually dive on this island and basically into an active volcano. Now, after getting diving certificate there was no frigging way I was going to pass this sort of unique possibility so there I went.

Day started off perfectly. Weather was beautiful, nearly cloudless blue sky and not much wind. I was also lucky this time with my dive group since this time it wasn't filled with 50-year old couples. We had Swede who had been traveling for 15 months, girl from Switzerland, girl from Germany and guy from UK.

Well, dives turned out to be little disappointment. First of all we couldnt dive the best sites cause wind was blowing from southeast and eastern side had the best spots. We dived 2 spots on western side with only 1 guide and weird thing was that we all had to come up when first person was running low on air(!). Since I pretty much kick ass with air consumption I had half tank left after both dives, which btw was more than even our instructor had :) I guess I'm growing gills and starting to breathe like a fish. Anyway, despite little disappointing dives I can't complain. Diving is always fun and after each and every dive feeling is just great, I guess it's some sort of nitrogen high :) Oh, and the island was gorgeous.

Great group of people though, afterwards we all went to town's Irish pub for beer and see local Jazz band playing(yes, Jazz band in Irish pub, go figure...).

Now I'm still in quiet and sleepy town of Whakatane waiting for my bus which is not going to arrive in another 4 hours so I have some time to kill and get some reading done. Originally I was planning to head back to west from here towards Rotorua, but I decided to scrap that plan. Instead of going to Rotorua, I'm taking the long way around to Taupo and heading towards East Coast and Hawkes Bay wine area. First stop will be Gisborne.

I just realised yesterday that it's only like a week until Christmas. There are Xmas trees around here and some lights but it surely doesn't feel like Christmas when temperature is steady +25 and sun doesn't go down till about 20:30-21:00. Heh, I'm not complaining though. I prefer this sort of Christmas to crappy Finnish version anytime.

Speaking of Summer...I remember clearly comments from many Finns back home that "Oh, but you don't appreciate Summer without Winter", "I really like 4 seasons", "You get bored of Sun within 3 months", etc. Well, all those comments are bunch of bullsh*t. I have now enjoyed Sun away from Finland almost 6 months and I can't get enough of it. Trust me, you don't need to endure 8 months of crap weather to appreciate warm, light and Sun. There is no other mood lifter like seeing Sun high up in the sky every single day - and most mornings. The more I spend time here, the less I miss winter, spring and autumn. Do I really want to come back?