The Surf Highway

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Hello everyone! I hope life is good at home, where ever that may be! Since the last time I wrote I have come back to the North Island of New Zealand. Before I hopped over to the North Island I spent three days walking the Queen Charlette track in the Marborough sound. The first day the weather was shit, in rained the whole time so I ran most of the way. It's a pretty easy walk because there is a boat that takes your pack for you from place to place. Also there is a mix of High end resorts and cheap campsites, you don't really fell like your getting back to natural when can have a shower, buy a beer and sleep in a nice bed. But the views of the sound from the walk were amazing and weather was awesome on the last day. I spent about a week in Wellington with my friend Lawrence and Toby. After Wellington me and Toby started our way up the west coast via the surf highway. We stop on the way and took a jet boat up the Whangnui river, which is where they filmed "The River Queen". It was a little disappointing, but the guy how gave us the ride was pretty cool. He had lived on the river his whole life and the only way to get to his house was by boat. He was pretty ruff, he almost broke my hand when he shook it and he had more fingers then teeth. After our trip with "The River King" we hit the surf highway. The people on the west coast are really nice, especially the local surfers. They were all more than happy to share their knowledge of the area. We surfed for two days in Opinaki and we were the only two people surfing at the beach. At the end of the week the swell die all over the west coast so we decide to head north to the Waitomo caves. On our way to New Plymouth we stopped in Oakura. There was a reggae and dub concert going on so we stopped and checked it out. It was full of people which was a change from most of the places on the west coast. The headliner was a New Zealand band called Salmonella Dub. The next day we headed to the caves. We desided to go on a trip through the caves, but while we were waiting we went and watch a rabbit get sheared ( It was pretty raddam but funny). Our cave trip was awesome! It was about 5 hours long and was really involved. First we rappelled into the caves, that was really fun and eventhough I have jumped out of a plane I was still pretty nervous looking down at the start. Then we walked upstream through the river to the glow worm caves. It was awesome when we turned our lights off deep in this cave and it was lit up by thousands of glowworms. Next we floated down the river in the cave on innertubes in the dark. The next part was the funnest, we climbed through tight caves which were half submerged underwater. I was really nervous about these because they were so tight and small and full of water. But when the guide said " Ian! Come show the girls how this is done" I suddently found the courage. Finally we had to rock climd out the same part we rappelled. It was an awesome day! The next day we headed for Raglan to do some more surfing. We surfed for almost 5 hours yesterday and I was absolutely exhausted, but it was so beautiful it was hard to get out of the water. I'm in Hamilton for a couple days before going back to Raglan then to Auckland to sell the Van and I fly to Cairns in Australia on May 9th. Cheers!

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Comments

[Graham]

I hate you
I can't wait until you run out of money and have to come back to reality with the rest of us.

[Justin]

Looks like you're havin fun bud, keep it up.