The Adventures of Quickstride and Shambler: New Zealand Day One

The Adventures of Quickstride and Shambler continue! Jenny and I were fortunate to go to New Zealand recently, and you are fortunate enough to read about our adventures here! Head to the shop to support the cause, buy a book, buy stickers, buy a patch, or buy a shirt! Any little bit helps, but particularly the books and patches. All the products make great gifts to yourself or a loved one. Support me, your favorite bush-league author, in my endeavors to make better content.

One of the benefits of stepping back from my regular USAF job and into the role as an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Studies for Detachment 175 was the periodic lull times built into a public university’s schedule. Another benefit was the relative proximity of vacation locations in Asia and Oceania, and Jenny and I meant to capitalize on that as much as possible. For my Spring Break 2024, we leapt at the trifecta of lull-time, proximity, cheap(er) plane tickets, and our growing wanderlust that had gone un-medicated since our honeymoon in 2022.

We planned to stay in Auckland for two nights, then head South on the North Island for another night, before catching a ferry across the channel and finishing our trip driving a campervan around the South Island until it was time to go back home. Jenny did almost all of the planning, so my role was to make sure we had our batteries charged, music downloaded, and journal the events of our trip.

Landing late in the Auckland airport, we had a short night’s sleep before waking up early Sunday morning to tackle our first adventure. Jenny drove us three hours, in the dark, on the “wrong” (left) side of the road from Auckland to a town called Tutukaka (pronounced exactly how you would hope). Jenny’s newfound hobby of SCUBA diving brought us to Dive! Tutukaka, a tour company that promised to bring us out to the Poor Knights Island marine preserve for some diving and Snorkeling.

The Poor Knights Islands, or Tawhiti Rahi, are a group of islands off New Zealand’s Northland Coast that have been uninhabited since the 1820’s due to tribal warfare during New Zealand’s “Musket Wars” period. There are also some other, smaller islands nearby referred to as “The Poor Squires.” Nobody seems to know why the islands are named such, one theory is they are named for the Poor Knights of Windsor, another is the islands resemble a desert called Poor Knight’s Pudding. I prefer the desert explanation.

Being uninhabited for over a century, the Poor Knights islands are in near pristine condition, hosting a variety of plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world. According to our tour boat’s skipper, the tribe that inhabited the island until 1820, the Ngati Wai, allied themselves with one of the “mainland” chieftains who had acquired muskets. The Ngati Wai sent their warriors to help the mainland chief in his conquest of his neighbors, and while the Ngati Wai warriors were gone, a rival tribe, the Hikutu, launched a raid on the undefended village, killing most of the women and children left behind. When the Ngati Wai warriors returned to the island to find the scene of destruction, the Ngati Wai chief declared the islands “tapu” (taboo), and nobody has set foot on them except for research or other scientific reasons since.

Our skipper explained all this history to our dive group on the upper deck of the boat while the boat’s deckhands were getting the diving and snorkeling equipment ready on the lower deck. This is also where we learned that most of our dive group were Americans and American Expats, with a German couple, a French girl, and a skinny, whiny British guy who couldn’t quite wrap his head around why the islands were left alone after 1820, leading to the following exchange:

British Whiner: “You mean the whites just left the islands alone?”

Kiwi Skipper: “What do you mean?”

Skinny British Whiner: “Why would the whites leave the islands alone?”

Kiwi Skipper (visibly confused by the question considering the history lesson he just delivered to us in a very clear and concise manner): “Because they are tapu.”

Skinny British Whiny Manbaby: “Why would the white people care that the islands are taboo?”

Kiwi Skipper (now annoyed): “Because they are TAPU.”

At that point, the annoying, whiny, skinny British Manbaby looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but the aggressive American glares from the rest of the tour group, who wanted to get to diving shut him down. I didn’t like this guy when we first got on the boat, but I didn’t know why. I figured it was because he was English, but after witnessing that exchange I realized I had instinctively deduced that he was not only English, but skinny, whiny, annoying, and a little racist.

Anyway, the gear was ready, and we all filed back to the lower deck to shrug into our rented wetsuits, don our SCUBA/Snorkeling Gear, and hop into the water. As a Minnesotan, I am normally opposed to swimming with any gear that is designed to keep me “warm.” Swimming in frozen or partially frozen lakes gives Minnesotans the confidence that, unless there are literal ice chunks in the ocean, any time the water is above 50 Fahrenheit, we’ll be fine in just a swimsuit. This time, I relented to the peer pressure and pulled myself into the thick, neoprene body suit.

I still can’t SCUBA dive due to a hole in my eardrum, carefully placed there by a careless Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor when I was a wee lad, so I snorkeled while Jenny dove with the rest of the dive group. Coming from Hawai’i, where the water is warm and the colors underwater are vibrant, I had really high expectations for the snorkeling. It was super cool to see the kelp forests, and the fish swimming around the rocks, but I have to admit that Hawai’i’s snorkeling was much better. Plus I really didn’t like the wetsuit. It was heavy and hard to swim in, and I really didn’t feel like the water was cold enough on the surface to justify the wetsuit.

The plan was to dive/snorkel at two spots around Poor Knights, but when we boarded the boat again after the first dive spot I realized how tired I was. I opted to stay on the boat and take a nap in the sun on the top deck while Jenny executed the second dive. Which came back to bite her, literally, when she was returning to the boat and swam through a swarm of pink jellyfish and got stung on the pinky. The jellyfish sting wasn’t too painful for me, but it did give Jenny a couple extra freckles on her pinky for a couple weeks.

While we were floating off the coast of the largest island, we saw several of New Zealand’s native parrakeet, the Kakariki, flitting along the cliff face in search for rocks. I was on the boat with just the crew while the rest of the tour group was diving, and saw the birds first. Initially, I was just like “neat, a colorful bird,” but then the boat crew got really excited. They even sent one of their newbies out on their inflatable raft to try to get closer for better photos.

Photos of the Kakariki secured, the Skipper fired the boat back up, and took us to see the largest sea cave by volume in the world, Rikoriko cave. I can’t remember what Rikoriko means, and online translation says it means either “fun” or “intercourse.” A little column A, a little column B I suppose. Anyway, the cave is big enough that the Skipper piloted the boat in for us to sample the acoustics that made Rikoriko cave the site of a few music videos. Rounding out our dive trip, we also toured the arches around Tawhiti Rahi, even piloting through the largest one before heading back to shore in Tutukaka.

After our busy day at sea, Jenny and I were starving, so we stopped in Whangarei (wang-a-ray, I think) for a bite to eat. Of course, we somehow managed to stop before anything was open, so we shared a shawarma, tiramisu, and a coffee at a Turkish joint while we waited for our chosen restaurant to open. When we did get into our chosen restaurant, Jenny and I had some seafood chowder for an appetizer. I ordered fish and chips because I read the menu wrong (I wanted the pan-seared not the pan-fried fish), and Jenny ordered a pork belly dish that was delightful.

Our meal completed, we headed back to Auckland for one more night. The first day of our adventure was long, but very fun. We still had so much more to explore while in New Zealand.