The Poor Knights

I spent this past Valentine's Day with another man's fiance.

The arrangements were made well in advance. A boat was chartered just for the occasion, taking us and a handful of others on a cruise to a group of islands just off the northern coastline called the Poor Knights. Everyone who wasn't already coupled up was soon paired off. A handlful even grouped into threes or more - mostly the beginners who were new to this sort of thing. It wasn't long after we arrived before everyone slipped into skin-tight neoprene suits (with special breathing aparatus), which is of course when the real fun began.

I met Rebecca three years ago, during a brief visit to Australia. I didn't have much of a plan for how to spend my time over there, and ended up deciding to take a shot at learning how to scuba dive. The airfare up to Cairns was reasonable, and few places offer better diving than the Great Barrier Reef. We met on the shuttle from the hostel to the diving school, and have been friends ever since. She's come over to visit New Zealand a few times, and on the last trip we dove the wreck of the Rainbow Warrior. The timing on this particular was a bit of a fluke on two counts - my own boat was long since supposed to have arrived in Auckland, and when buying the tickets in November its easy to forget anything significant happening in the middle of February. Fortunately her boyfriend wasn't too perturbed about the whole situation, even if could be made to sound "suspect."

On the boat we met Izick, an Israeli who is busy traveling around the world (his second time no less) with his girlfriend. That's not his real name, but is as close to how its actually spelled as he was willing to walk me through. With a last name like my own I can appreciate where he's coming from. We invited him to join us and had a wonderful time exploring reefs with names like The Garden, The Great Wall, and Arthur's Rocks. The photos below taken underwater are hers, and more can be found at the usual place.