Jacques Cousteau rated the Poor Knights Islands as one of the top ten dive sites in the world. And who am I to argue? I did two dives around the volcanic formations and they were both just wonderful.

I stayed at a strange little hostel in Whangerei where the manager was a friendly guy in his seventies who had nose and eyebrow piercings and a penchant for adrenalin sports. I ended up in a twin room because the dorm was occupied by a woman who snored. She was overweight and obnoxious and spent all her time either smoking or sprawled on the couch watching telly.

Whangerei itself (pronounced Fang-ger-ray with a rolled 'r') was a nice enough town with a tiny rip off art gallery (as in the unsuspecting visitor was ripped off, not the art) and a fernery. I met a German guy called Marcel who was planning to walk around New Zealand in a year. He started in Auckland and had been walking for seven weeks, sleeping in a tent or hostels, and reckoned he'd done about 500 miles so far.

Me and a guy from Boston called Sal, who was a good laugh, were picked up for our dives from the hostel and driven to Tutukaka on the coast. The dive shop was really professional and the instructors were friendly and fun. The boat ride out to the islands made me feel a bit queasy as there was quite a big swell and we were going up and down. No one else seemed off-colour, but then I find that people tend to get quite macho about sea-sickness and affect a "doesn't bother me" attitude even when they're feeling a bit under the weather. Me - not so much, I was clutching the rail and fixing my eyes on the horizon as if my life depended on it.

I wasw a bit nervous before getting into the cold water but after the first shock of the icy fingers down your back takes your breath away as it creeps into your wetsuit, I was fine. The water was bright blue and visibility was around 20 metres. We swam along island walls lined with soft coral, anemones, beautiful garish nudibranches and forests of kelp. There were scorpion fish lurking under rocks and toadstool groupers hiding in crevices. We were followed around by Sandager's wrasse as we swam under the archway and up into a cave where Nick and I surfaced in an air bubble on the roof. We left Middle Arch and headed over to Trevor's Rocks for the second dive, where we saw a disco ball urchin which lit up blue when you shone a torch on it. There was so much to see, especially if you stopped and looked closely amongst the kelp. There were loads of moray eels (yellow, grey and mottled) all looking very fierce with their scowling faces and sharp teeth.