A Day in the Bay

I arrived in Paihia Tuesday afternoon and checked into a little place called the Pickled Parrot. The weather was beautiful and I just relaxed and went for a walk along the beach. On Thursday, I took a boat ride out into the Bay of Islands to see dolphins and rocks.

So if you haven't noticed already, I'm a little obsessed with the geology here. The pictures below show the columnar jointing of basalt as lava cooled quickly, contracted and formed cracks perpendicular to the surface of flow.

The Hole in the Rock. Actually there are several of these. They are formed by the erosion of the soft mudstone while the harder graywacke remains.

Oh and the dolphins were cool, too.




So was the fantastic beach we went to for our lunch break.