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Published: January 20th 2007
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well well well look who it is
Jan 14/07
Lesson of the day: Sun is extremely hard to find in Auckland so when you see it, enjoy it.
Well the weather gods had finally looked down on me today and decided that several days of rain and clouds was enough suffering on this poor poor lad. So by late afternoon the weather turned to gold so the family and I went to the beach to soak up some rays and try out some body surfing on the decent sized waves. But sadly this came at a price as a huge wave knocked me to the ground, taking not only my juice money and my pride but also my Oakley sunglasses, which I have had since the 9th grade.... R.I.P oakleys you will be missed.
Jan 15/07
Lesson of the day: a closed mouth is impervious to seawater; an open mouth is not...fact!
Today was to be a glorious day as we were leaving for Bayles beach on the west coast of the North Island. This place made the cut when it comes to an awesome beach community. Located on a 90 km beach... yes a
90 km beach, this little jewel also contains some gnarly waves which would make most surf communities jealous. Now as many of you know, one of my main goals while here is to surf... so this was a good place to get my feet wet....so to speak. I was to begin my trials with my friend Kaths bogey board and zero know how. Yet within only a few minutes I was figuring out how to catch these crazy waves, which ranged from 3 to 5 feet... though there were a few, several dozen yards from me which got up to 10 feet! The end of our day was spend sitting by one of the many dunes with a glass of wine watching the sun set, while a paraglider drift lazily above out heads....did i mention i love this place?
Jan 16/07
Lesson of the day: clocking 60km/h on an ATV while flying down a beach makes Ryan smile
Kai Iwi was the word of the morning... a local fresh water lake which allowed me to work on my tan (or burn), as the water proved to be a hair less then the "warm" some had promised it
would be. Yet the ocean called out to me again as I followed this up with another couple of hours bogey boarding in some slightly rougher seas. On a side note I had learned that 2 people had drowned on this beach just several months before hand and that these waters, which i had thought were raging were in fact quite calm, compared to usual…crazy eh? So with this little tidbit of info, I momentarily got out of the water and rented an ATV and took my mom out for an hour and flew down the beach... which was crazy fun as we had a solid wall of sand dunes on one side and a endless turbulent column of water on the other.
Jan 17/07
Said goodbye to Bayley’s beach and hello to the bay of islands, which I had heard was close to paradise. On the drive there got a good look at the "Tane Mahuta" or god of the forest which was a 2000 year old tree....it was old and big…enough said
Jan 18/07
Lesson of the day: I do not get sea sick... my mother does
I had always wanted to swim
with dolphins...a friend of a friend of mine had said they come in 6 fruit flavour, though I think he was confusing them with skittles. But regardless of this I knew that it would be a highlight in my life. So my fam and I booked a 4 hour trip which would allow us to, weather dependent, swim along side wild dolphins which were found throughout the bay of islands. Now I had never experienced big surf on a boat before... but i gotta say I enjoyed it. 3 foot waves though nothing compared to what some boats have to sail through is still quite a ride when your on a speed boat blasting through the open ocean. It took us nearly 3 1/4 hours to find these little bastards but finally we did… and with my feet dangling over the bow I watched a pod of 9 foot long dolphins jump and play around our boat. But dolphins have a major case of ADD and they get easily side tracked so they quickly left our boat and started to surf the bow wake of a 50 foot yacht that passed us by. Now dolphins are big business here so
many boats in this area are out to get their passengers platinum seats to the show. And in this case it resulted in 3, 50 foot boats (ours included) racing each other 25 feet apart, to get these guys to swim in front of their boats wasting what precious little time we had left to swim with these guys. In the end the original 50 foot yacht won the dolphins hearts and we were left in the dust...so no swimming with the dolphins for us... but it was still a hell of a good time.... the end
Jan 19/07
Rented some kayaks
Sun, swim, tan, drink, eat... repeat till days end
thats all she wrote
catch ya on the flip side
- Ryan
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Norma
non-member comment
Wait , wait, wait Susan ATV....
Hey Ryan Loving reading your comments. I think you've found your vocation. It has to do with writing.Can't believe you got your Mum on an ATV. The picture is hilarious. Me and my little lost sister on the back. How you they are going to handle coming back to the rat race I have no idea.. Pls pass on my best to all. Missing you. ---- Storm