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*You will find links to the previous parts at the bottom of the post.*
Our journey was approaching the finish line. The whole group we travelled with flew back to Moscow, but we decided to extend the trip for another couple of days, rent a car and drive to the town of Tutukaka (something about 180 km from the Auckland).
Here in the post you can see two days: one day for diving and a walk near Tutukaka, and the last day — a farewell look at Auckland.
So, first Tutukaka. It is a small town on the east coast of the northern part of the North Island. A little more pictures of it's pretty marina with many boats can be found here.
Diving centers in Tutukaka organize daily diving trips at the The Poor Knights Islands, a place that Jacques Cousteau loved very much.
We enjoyed the boat trip, looked first at the coastline and different boats...
...and at the islands, their grottoes and arches. Everything is green. But landing on the islands, as far as I know, is prohibited for environmental reasons. So you can only look outside, above water and under water.
The underwater world here is very unusual, and you can still climb the crack into the island. We do not have our own underwater photos, those below were taken by the instructor of Dive! Tutukaka diving center, for which we say "Thanks"! We look funny here, don't we?
And in the evening, happy with one of our little dreams came true — to dive in New Zealand, we went for a walk in the Tutukaka Reserve park.
We climbed into the cave and looked at the surroundings from a height where the automatic beacon is located. We can recommend this place — you can walk relaxed along the coastline and hills or you can climb higher for the sake of good views.
The next day we drove back to Auckland. Having bought additional souvenirs, we decided to spend the evening in Mount Victoria Reserve.
Like many mountains here, Mount Victoria is a volcano, about 87 m high. At the top, we found such cute mushrooms near this structure. They are part of the ventilation system and are simply decorated.
It offers excellent views of downtown Auckland.
The harbor and inner bay are also clearly visible.
There are many secluded spots in the shade of trees, benches where you can sit and admire the views. On one such, we met our last sunset in New Zealand.
The sight of the setting sun or dawn sun is my weakness, as you can see from the photos of my blog. So why should I deny myself the pleasure? :)
And the next day we flew home. The journey is over. It's good that there are always memories and photos!
Previous parts:
Camera: OLYMPUS E-M1 MarkII and DJI Mavic 2 Pro
P.S.One small but important note. Because this post was made for the TravelFeed.io project through its interface, it seems to me that all links work correctly only when viewing through TravelFeed.io. This applies to both text links and high-resolution image links. So, if some links don't work, but you are interested in them — follow the links at the beginning or at the end of the post.
You can also see my photos in my blog on LJ and in my profile on NatGeo
I really like the fact that one of the all time best NZ posts is by a Russian - LOL
Just the other day I was noting how few Kiwis are on Hive - bugger all...
And I really like the fact that real Kiwi likes my posts about NZ :) Thanks!
But NZ is not a big country, and its population is not as large as in some big countries - the population of one Moscow city is more than twice bigger the population of whole NZ. If we take a certain percentage of the population, then, I think, the % of Moscow citizens on the Hivi does not differ so much from the % of Kiwis. Besides, Hive or Travelfeed are still not very popular platforms among people. Call more Kiwi here :)
Also, I think people are more willing to write some travel posts about those places that are new and unusual for them, in fact, for the sake of new places and impressions, people go on trips. And it seems that sharing photos of your native surroundings is less interesting and exciting than photos of distant lands, which caused a lot of vivid emotions.
Funny thing is that when Steemit started in 2016 Kiwis were all over it - way more than you might expect for a population of 5 million.
By the start of 2017 there were about 50 active Kiwis posting (early adopters) but by 2019 they had nearly all quit, and now there are less than 10.
And there haven't been any NZ scenic posts for years really - I did a few myself like this one from back in 2016:
https://steemit.com/travel/@sift666/the-south-island-of-new-zealand
Looking back at that post from four years ago I'm struck by how much better my posts were back then, and also how much better the payouts were back in the early days!
And that is the real reason so many people gave up - watching both the quality and payouts go downhill for so long was disheartening.
Since the Hive hardfork I've regained some sense of optimism again, and am becoming more active and more positive about this blockchain.
Oh, didn't know there was a lot of kiwi in the beginning. Yes, the diminution of rewards and the difficulty of being noticed and appreciated will certainly upset people a lot. And I also remember good big payments at the very beginning, now I don't have to dream about them :) Well, then the population of the site was small, which means there was more chances that really interesting posts would be noticed, read and appreciated. Now you need to either not chase the reward, or put much more effort. But not everyone is here for the sake of some kind of global earnings) It's just nice when people appreciate your work somehow.
I read your post — it is really very good. Why not start writing more? :) On TravelFeed with cross-posting on Hive, for example, this is the place for scenic and travel posts.
Yea, I've got a working theory, I need to test. It's about building businesses on HIVE, instead of just using the posts and the current communities.
People are sort of short sighted, and they need to be more invested, but tis' a different sort of thing. The profit seeking behavior needs to be placed in macro bull run movements, which is difficult.
I'll try to figure it out.
But the point is -- the payouts are going to suck if you're just posting hive for hive people. That's just how it works, I think.
The whole thing of using the blockchain for lots of things other than blogging is really new to me - that is not the sort of thing I think of myself but can see that is the future. And that is why I'm invested in the platform and hoping it will take off.
Yea - That's the whole deal - people need to be thinking in terms of projects and businesses, instead of blogs. Is my thought.
I haven't found a way to clearly express that yet.
Coming up with and developing a new direction is always more difficult than just following the usual path (of just simple blogging here). I hope you succeed and may be teach others!
https://peakd.com/hive-154303/@rootdraws/beyond-blogging-on-hive-beyond-the-posh-initiative
I wrote you this blog.
Yeah, I saw. Thanks for the analysis and the idea, I answered you in that post!
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Hiya, @ItchyfeetDonica here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Top 3 in Daily Travel Digest #917.
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Hiya, @ItchyfeetDonica here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Top 3 in Daily Travel Digest #917.
Your post has been manually curated by the @pinmapple team. If you like what we're doing, please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider supporting other authors like yourself and us so we can keep the project going!
Become part of our travel community:
Great! Thanks! :)
You're welcome @sharker👍
Congratulations @sharker! You received the biggest smile and some love from TravelFeed! Keep up the amazing blog. 😍 Your post was also chosen as top pick of the day and is now featured on the TravelFeed.io front page.
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@smeralda (TravelFeed team)
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Thank you! :)