The Rock Overnight Cruise in the Bay of Islands – Day 355

Today we have a double whammy episode for you. Yes, we are doing an overnight cruise in the Bay of Islands.

This evening, our activity starts at 4pm because today we are doing an overnight cruise in the Bay of Islands. So we’re joining the team from The Rock Adventure Cruise and checking out their awesome house boat.

The Rock boat is an amazing hostel on the water – it’s pretty awesome and it’s gonna be our home for the next 22 hours, so we start with a nice cold beer.

While we are waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive we are relaxing by the bar having a nice cold beer on the ground floor of this multi-story boat. Once everyone’s on board it’s time for us to set sail and for the adventure cruise to begin.

As we are pulling away from the Paihia Wharf which is the main hub of the Bay of Islands, we get to see an amazing sunset so vivid and beautiful, and today we are making our way to Matauwha Bay.

We’re going to try shoot the duck with this paintball gun – I’ll demonstrate. It’s actually way harder than it looks, so if I miss it I have an excuse.

That’s right, our first activity is to shoot a rubber duck with a paintball gun and this is an awesome icebreaker activity where we introduce ourselves before we shoot.

Alright, my name is Robin. I am originally from France I live in New Zealand now.

Way too far! Aim it down!

And damn, Adam was right it’s actually really hard to shoot that rubber duck while the road is moving.

My name’s Laura, I’m from the Uk and I once ate paint thinking it was chocolate.

I’m Lennie I’m from Florida which is like an hour from Melbourne.

After getting to know everybody, we are still moving around the Bay of Islands and we’re already getting prepared we are getting bait cos right now we’re gonna be fishing our dinner.

When we hand you the fishing rod we’re gonna give you a hook in the other – it’s really important that you hold onto the hook if it’s dangling down you might end up hooked onto somebody else – what we’re after is fish not people. People aren’t as good as fish.

Fishing is pretty fun in itself, but on top of being the food provider there is an extra perk in catching a fish in the Bay of Islands with the Rock cruise, we get ourselves a free beer so everybody is all in.

I haven’t got anything yet. Fishing for snapper. I haven’t got anything yet, though. I’ve checked and the bait’s still on. I felt a little bit of something nibbling but it swam away.

I’m kneeling down in despair. I’m almost on the brink of giving up.

Why are you cooking?

I don’t want to be in the position where I say something bad…. Cos they’re all terrible fishermen. That’s why.

Yes, the captain actually knows our crowd very well – it’s pretty hard out there and there’s only one girl that ends up fishing a snapper and releasing it in the water cos it was too small to be eaten – yes, even when night fishing conservation is a prime concern in New Zealand.

But despite having an entire crew of useless fisherman we are not going to go hungry for long, the team has prepared for us a huge buffet and we are stuffing ourselves with heaps of food there is some salad, there are some burgers, there are some sausages, there are some buns, it’s all so good!

And right after dinner we are already moving onto our next activity.

Our final activity of the evening is night kayaking, but why would you want to go night kayaking you can’t see anything? But apparently in the Bay of Islands, there’s actually a lot to see at night when you are kayaking in particular – bio luminescent algae.

That’s right, there’s actually algae in the water that lights up int he dark and you guys have all probably heard of glowworms in New Zealand well the bioluminescent algae is the second form of bioluminecsence in New Zealand so we are heading on the water to check it our for ourselves. However when we start kayaking around the guides tell us that the moon is shining too bright to see the bioluminescence in all its glory like they usually get to do. But when we start stirring up the water with our paddles and with our hands, we start to see this firecracker-like sparkles in the water and that is the bioluminescence algae. It’s actually quite hard to pick up on camera but trust us it’s really hard to see. Back on the boat we huddle around the fireplace warming up our feet after getting them wet during the kayaking and all around the rock adventure cruise, there’s loads of really awesome places to hang out from the bar to the pool table and the nice comfortable sofas.

After socialising through the night, we head upstairs to bed.

So this feature is to be continued tomorrow, we are going to be still on The Rock Adventure Cruise but we’ve got heaps more activities to do so join us tomorrow.