Adventure of a Lifetime: One of my Top Three Favorite Trips/Places in New Zealand- Shark Dive New Zealand

Great White Shark carcarion carcarius 'The ragged toothed one' - Third Week of Fall Break

"Wednesday is out, aaargh!! 30 knots of westerly which is not feasible. Friday looks like it could be a goer though, can we confirm Wednesday if it's definitely going to happen? The maps will be a bit more up to date then."

Best

Andria

After receiving this email having already drove 5 hours south to Dunedin we (Jack, Katie, Bryan and Myself) were pretty bummed. All we wanted to do was see some sharks. Luckily, it was the beginning of the third week of break. I kept in contact with them to see if we could set up another time later that week when the weather was favorable. Upon waiting for confirmation we were able to find fun things to do in and around Christchurch.

We went to a fantastic playground in Christchurch that is open 24/7 and includes trampolines in the ground, slides, ziplines, nets to climb on, and other basic park stuff. Jack, Katie and I went mountain biking in the Port Hills not to far away from Ilam (my appartments). We ended up missing the first track and good things too because the next track our guide said was for novices was decently challenging. I ended up going head over heals while walking my bike down a small rock face and almost fell down the hill (the bike actually did). As the adrenaline flowed I was able to keep my balance all the way down and the trail became increasingly more fun as we encountered more dirt paths. At the end I chased a sheep around that almost took out Jack haha.

Later in the week we took a drive out to Arthur's Pass National Park to try and do cave stream and find the Devil's Punchbowl. Cave stream is exactly as it sound with a stream of water running through completely dark cave. It's actually located in Castle Rock, which is the filming location for where they shot the end fight scene in The Chronicles of Narnia. Devil's Punchbowl is a 131m high waterfall that we ended up driving 30-45min out of our way when it really was 1min from the visitor center. Needless to say.....we got a little wet at the end

"Had an exceptional talent for spotting the White Sharks"

On April 30th 2016 at 7am we departed Bluff, South Island, New Zealand to venture out cage diving with Great White Sharks. We were aboard a 15m (49ft) vessel. Took us about 30-45 min to arrive behind a chain of Islands called Tiki Islands and was parked behind Edmund Island and there we waited for the sharks. Tuna heads were put out on a buoy and chum was constantly being grinded and dumped in the water. It wasn't until around 9am we saw it. The Fins of a Great White Shark. Everyone jumped up in joy (I know I did) and rushed to grab my camera. There was about 2 surface sightings of the shark in a span of about an hour. We waited until it began hanging around the boat and then sent the divers down. 3-4 drivers could be in the cage at one time. We took turns rotating and had intervals of about 15-25 min until water observing the sharks. The first time I saw one under water I thought it was the most fascinating thing I had ever seen. Some of my air in my regulator kept cutting out on my first time down so in between trying to view the sharks and breathing it was difficult to decide which to do haha. Being in one the corners there was a sliding door that I accidently noticed would open up almost the whole side of the cage that was big enough for me to slip out and definitely big enough for a shark to poke its head inside (made sure to keep this closed). We were in about 60ft of water and if you went to the bottom of the cage you could see all the way to the bottom. At times, you could view the sharks cruising around at the bottom. We were extremely lucky and saw about 3-4 white sharks with one being a ginormous female. The captain said this was the best day of the season by far for shark activity and they do tours from February to June. For unknown reason the shark sighting this year had been sporadic. These sharks were about 16-17 feet long! They moved so elegantly through the water as well, gracefully swimming with little to no effort and taking the bait if they wanted it. Most of their activity was cool, calm, and collected and didn't bother with us much. I remember once I looked down and one was coming straight up to the cage!!! Another instance a shark swam in between the cage and the boat and thrashed around kind of violently. Very cool to see! They hung around until later in the afternoon and then we had to head back to port. Before leaving we viewed some of the seals on the island the sharks surely prey on. All in all the trip was a huge success.

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