Surfing like Jesus

Hello from Hamilton in the middle of the north island, about 100 kms from Auckland. We have just had an awesome few days in Raglan, which is on the west coast, 30kms from Hamilton. Raglan is a surfing mecca, apparently. It was featured in some film back in the 70's and has really reliable waves and is a real laid back surfy town. We stayed in a holiday park on the beach which was way cool. It was our first time actually staying in Biff but it was all fine. The only thing of any note about the holiday park was the toilets. They were an entomologists wet dream!! The first night i went to use the showers i shared them with a grasshopper, 4 beetles and a ton of moths. They didn't bother me though, even when i tried to shower them down the plug hole! The awesome sunset made up for it though. (i will post some sunset pics soon as i have nearly enough for a whole Facebook album!)

The first day we were there we walked into town, crossing a big bridge over the harbour. Tons of kids, some as young as 4 (with arm bands on - FFS!) were jumping off the bridge into the sea below. It was a good 20 feet drop. I was super tempted to give at a go but Kate vetoed it, oh and i didn't have my swimming shorts either. Got some cool pics of a kid jumping out of a tree into the harbour too. The town of Raglan has a population of 2700 peeps so it was dead quiet. Lots of little cafes, bars and surf shops which we explored. We also booked ourselves some surf lessons for the following day.

It was a pretty rough night in Biff. His bed is really comfortable and there is tons of room but for some reason i didn't really sleep. It was going to be my excuse too if i sucked at surfing. The surf school came and picked us up and transported us to our class room near Whale Bay, just up the coast from Raglan. After about half an hour of classroom talk i felt pretty confident I'd find surfing a piece of piss. We then jumped back in the van and headed to the beach. We got wet suited up, grabbed our boards, had a few last practice 'pops' on the beach then all ran off into the surf. I got lulled into a false sense of security nearly straight away. My first wave was cool. I just rode it in on my belly before falling off about 20 metres from the beach but my next wave i actually stood up and rode the wave all the way in! On my Second wave!! The instructor spotted this and ordered me to swap boards with Kate. So Kate gave me her little board and that was that. It took me another hour before i stood up again and rode a wave. The smaller board was way less stable and the deck was real slippy. I watched Kate for a while and she wasn't fairing much better than me, falling off nearly every time she tried to stand. I did see her ride one wave in and we all gave her a cheer. I then watched her a bit later and, i don't know how she did it, but she rode in a wave standing with her feet together, facing the shore with both arms out, pretty much the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do. She totally looked like Jesus Christ on the cross, but on a surfboard. I damn near pee'd my wetsuit! It looked so funny! She made it though and the hours of ribbing i gave her later didn't seem to remove that fact.

After a few hours surfing we headed out to the deeper water but we were all knackered by now and all fell off a lot. It was good fun though and definitely something i would do again. I ache like a BEE-ATCH today though. Can't turn my head and my shoulders and back are super stiff. Oddly it feels like i have broken my pinky toe on my right foot too. I'll live though.

So, we are in Hamilton now. Just relaxing this afternoon, gonna have a meal later then head back out to the coast tomorrow to Kawhia. We're there for one night then we head over to Waitomo. They have the glow worm caves there but we might do some abseiling and black water rafting (floating along underground rapids!). Should be fun.