Raglan

Leaving Waitomo and heading to Kawhia (remember the wh is pronounced f, theres actually a town called Whakatana, which of course everyone giggles when they say it), a small sleepy fishing town on the west coast. Id thought about stopping here the night, but it was so sleepy that was about the only thing worth doing and I still had some daylight left. Had dinner in the local pub and against the advice of the publican, who thought the road might be impassable due to the rain, ( although I think she just wanted my business), I headed out on the dirt road to Raglan. The road wasnt impassable but it was getting close, and the 60k took nearly 2 hours. It was dark after the first 30 mins and the twists and turns and steep climbs had me chugging along at a crawl, but its all an adventure, I just hoped I didnt get the van stuck in the mud somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

On the drive to Kawhia

Raglan is a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

I guess Id heard so much about it from surfers I thought it would be a hopping little town. Its expensive, but then most of NZ has been, the houses are crazy high prices. I saw single bedroom houses for $350K and 2 bed 1 bath small shacks go for half million up.

The next day I set up for a surf lesson with a local surfer who has competed in world surfer competitions and is well known in the surfer community in NZ. Mikey was awesome. We went out to Manu beach which out of the 3 main beaches in Raglan is the easiest to surf. they progressively get harder the further south you go from bay to bay. Harder being they have rocks that will rip you to pieces, or rips that will pull you out into the Tasman sea in a second, not to mention the size of the waves. I got there on Saturday and after the stormy weather the surf was up pretty good. It was still raining off and on, but the sea wasnt too bad a temp and with the wetsuit Mikey set me up with I was good to go.

Ok so last time I surfed, I didnt get up on the board very often or for very long. It was only when I started to think back of the time that realized it had been 8 years since I had that last lesson in Hawaii. But laying on the board and having Mikey choose the right wave and push me off into it, made it really easy and I was standing and surfing better than most of the other beginners that were out in the sets too. So Im officially a surfer now.

I need to get better at asking to have my picture taken. I have non of me and Mikey, but I did go to a surfing competition at the next bay and took some of the guys there.

If you look to the left you can see a guy about to jump off into the water, to the right in the surf a some other surfers.

Trying out the panoramic software that came with the camera. This is Manu bay where I surfed

This rainbow was pretty cool, it went from one side of raglan to the other. Rainbows in NZ are starting to become a bit blase, you can pretty much see one everyday here.

Left Raglan the next day and on the advice of Mikey took a slight detour to go see Bridal Veil Falls.