About half-an-hour away from Steph and Lance's farm is the Bay of Islands. It's a huge bay filled with little volcanic rock "islands" formed eons ago. Some are puny; some are have homes on them.
We took a boat tour looking for dolphins to swim with. There are about 450 dolphins in the Bay of Islands, so they were easy to find, but they had their babies with them. The survival rate of baby dolphins is low, so swimming with them and disrupting their feeding habits is dangerous for the baby. The captain offered the entire ship the opportunity to get in the water in the bay and swim anyway, away from the dolphins. Mary was the only one who voiced interest (out of 150 people). They insisted she could, but she shied away (if only her husband would have done it with her :)
One of the "islands" is pretty infamous - it's called the Hole in the Rock. Over time, the ocean has eroded the limestone portion of this island. We literally drove through the hole. You can see in this pic (click on it to make it big) that we're looking at a sailboat through the rock. 
For lunch on the tour boat we stopped on an island with a restaurant for some awesome fish and chips (I think the best we had all trip). We took a little walk on the island into a sheep field. It was difficult dodging sheep dung! The island we were on was centrally located so we were able to see quite a few "islands" in the bay.| More NZ Dolphin Adventure Pics |
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