A pic taken with the Sun bouncing off the water

I kept hearing about this fantastic site people were visiting in the North Island called “The Hole in the Rock”. I was a bit curious about what it was, and had a few ideas of what it might be, so I figured it was worth checking out. So while I was in Pahia I took a scenic tour on a nice boat all around the Bay of Islands and then out to the “Hole in the Rock”.

The photo above is after we took our boat through it, yup, the hole is big enough to take a rather large boat through this. And what makes this even more amazing is that during rough seas and bad weather, this hole is sometimes almost completely invisible because the waterline has risen so high.

But we got to this spot probably about an hour or so into the trip. Before we got here, we did some dolphin watching and then cruised a bit of the coastline to see some of the cooler sights along the way.

Cool photo of a cliff edge

I took some photos of a bit of the coast, some of the things I thought looked cool and some cliff edges. One of the areas I thought looked particularly cool was this photo of a inlet on the cliff. All the cliff edges we saw while heading out to the rock were just normal drop offs so I thought I would snap a photo and hope that it would come out well. I think it came out alright, even aftere reducing the image size for a web ready photo.

In the previous post I mentioned that the area we are boating through was called the Bay of Islands. Named because of the 144 islands it has and it continue to grows. I saw a long narrow island that was different than all the other ones, not sure why this one was so, but all the other islands were like small cones coming out from the water and most of them had the nice oval shape to them. The photo I’ve posted below is a piece of this longer island and as we made or way around it. This was, in my opinion, the best area to snap a photo and get a good angle on it.

Edge of the longest island in the Bay of Islands

After we passed this island, we headed out along the coast and saw some interesting sites. One of the cool things we saw right before we reached the hole in the rock was the lighthouse perched on the edge of the cliffs. It’s still in use and alsp it’s a hotel with a few rooms. It’s the cheapest hotel int he Bay, only $8 dollars a night, but it’s also a 28Km hike out there so I think that’s why it’s so cheap.

Light House on the Tip of the Bay of Islands

It looked amazing though and if I had more time, I would have made the march out there for sure. And from what we were told, the next morning a boat taxi comes out and picks you up and brings you back to Pahia, but that cost $28 per person, so by the time you’re done with the entire day, it still cost as much as hostel or a local hotel in the area. But regardless, still a great site to see… It’s like one of those light houses you see in movies and in fact, I’m sure it has been in a few.

Soon after the Lighthouse was the actual “Hole in the Rock”. It reminded me a lot of the Morro Bay Rock because of it’s shape and size. But what’s different between the two is that the Morro Bay Rock was a piece that was blasted off from a volcano and landed there while the Hole in the Rock was created by earthquakes and volcanoes from under the ocean. AndI was of course the fact that Morro Bay Rock has no hole in it shaped by wind and water… but perhaps maybe one day.

– CORRECTION – It’s come to my attention that the Morro Bay rock isn’t an actual piece flung from a volcano, but a it is a volcanic plug. It’s what is left of the magma at the center of the volcano long after the outside portion of the volcano has been worn away over millions of years.

Thanks MorroBayChuck

But we did spend about 20 minutes getting some background on the rock and some general information. Once we started to go through it, we were told that if water drips on us from the top, not to wipe it off as it is considered good luck. The boat took about 5 minutes to go through as the captain made sure he kept her dead center in the hole. Last thing we wanted to do was hit and spring a leak. As appealing as the water looked, I’m sure it was damn cold and I wasn’t looking forward to a mini Titanic situation. Anyways, we made it through and made our way around the rock. I snapped off a few photos and thought asked if people were aloud to climb it. One of the tour guides told us it’s actually a sacred island and no one is allowed on it. Not like I would have jumped out and starting scaling it anyways if it was allowed!

Approaching the Rock

On our way through

Wall of the Rock

After we got around towards the front of the rock the boat stopped for a few minutes and the captain directed our attention to a certain spot on the edge of the rock. He had to point it out a few times because it was a bit hard to see, but as my left brain started to kick into gear, I was able to see what he was referring to. He kept mentioning a ladys face on the cliff edge and how it’s an important landmark to the Maori culture. I think it took me about 2 minutes to spot it, but once I did, I was definitely looking at a face! You can only see it from a certain perspective and from it’s side view.

The Face in the Rock

If you tried to look at it head on, you won’t see anything at all. I’ve got the photo uploaded here, but in order to see it properly, I upped a larger one with a width of about 1200pixels. Make sure you click on the image to see it in it’s full view.

Can you see the face?

So I’ve spammed this post with enough pictures and it kind of threw the hole alignment of the post off, but because this was such an awesome boat tour, I think it was ok. If you want to see more of my photos I took during my trip to the Bay of Islands, check out my Picasa photo gallery located under the alias TravelingWebGuy.

I still have more post I’m going to write about my trip to Pahia and the Bay of Islands which talks about the coast, some of the awesome houses I saw on the islands, and the $28,000 a night house we were shown.

Thanks for checking in!