Looking for guidance for NZ visit in September

[djsinc]

My wife and I will be in NZ with a fairly open schedule in late September. Among other touring activities, we were considering taking the time to check out what NZ diving has to offer. We are typically warm water divers, but I thought it might be a good chance to learn and try dry suit diving which we have not done before.
Looking for thoughts on whether this would be a good idea, and if any of the dive shops would be equipped to help us on renting/learning with a dry suit and coupling that with getting some good diving in.
Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[Bazzathemammoth]

Hey mate. Nz has some great diving. September is pretty cold. Depending on where you go you can dive wet if you want to avoid the hassle of learning to dive dry. I dive a 7/8 semi dry year round. I don’t know of many dive shops that have a good selection of rental dry suits. Global dive in Auckland would be a good place to start. They have some great instructors.

Poor knights is amazing, and I highly recommend northland dive. You can do the poor knights with them as a liveaboard or stay at their accommodation and do local dives from their rib. They have nitrox on site and cater to both tech and rec divers.

There are other dive shops that do day trips to the poor knights, but I haven’t been diving with them so ymmv. Where are you going and what type of diving do you enjoy?

The north east coast of Nz has lots of great diving once you get out of Auckland.

 

[Lorenzoid]

@lermontov , any advice for the OP?

 

[lermontov]

if your doing a tour and adding diving in as an extra then most of the popular dive shops will have rental gear as mentioned @Bazzathemammoth
its cold in the south so dry suits are recommended but if you can handle a bit of cold water then 7mm wet is ok

If you want to see some really nice countryside as you tour then id go to Northland dive (shane and Julia) in the far north dive the canterbury followed by Godive in malbourough ( brent) dive the Mikhail lermontov (look up U tube channel i have a few vids on there under peter taw) and then drive to Milford sound and dive (Lance) with Descend scuba

as far as scenic spots go the drive up to northland dive is amazing - rotorua is pretty unique with geothermal geysers and bubbling mud and has a world class MTB park -the desert road and mt Ruapehu is equally unique - the drive down the west coast of the south island is absolutely gob smackinginlgy beautiful - spend a day at punakiki -carry on your way to Queenstown and Milford sound and if its a nice day get a scenic helicopter tour over the glaciers at fox glacier

DM me if you need more help

 

[MB NZ]

Lots of good advice already. Water temperature will be at it's nadir. You could expect 15 degrees C north of Auckland. I'd check well in advance that where you are going does drysuit hire and training. In the north, it would fall outside the norm. "Dive Now" in Whangarei would be worth contacting. They do all sorts of training and run trips to the Poor Knights. I haven't had too much to do with them, but they seem like a good bunch.

 

[Macfod]

All would have been completed now so hope you got into the water at Poor Knight at tge latter part of our winter un dry suits