Auckland take two (minus one England team)

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Hello,

First I'd like to start with an apology: Unfortunately this blog will take on a different tone from that of the blog one before last. I'm sure everyone loved to hear about our adventures from the point of view of a 16th century explorer but frankly it is quite a lot of effort to write and probably didn't contain much in the way of useful information about what we actually did. So I write this time as a hungover 22 year old English male slightly buzzing on an iced mocha holding a strong urge for a France upset tomorrow.

So.. we begin after the game that we shall not mention, where we traveled across to Murawai 90 minutes west of Auckland on the west coast and began our week of surfing. We spent 2 days battling the endless stream of 7 foot white water on the west coast with mixed results. By mixed results I mean that the waves are so relentless (no sets with gaps between here) that on several occasions we didn't get far enough away from the coast to actually even attempt to surf a wave, and after 60 minutes of paddling then getting knocked back we had to give up. But we did have a good time whilst doing it, and on the Tuesday when the waves were manageable and our arms weren't completely destroyed we had a great couple of sessions, Jeppy nailing the pop before the wave breaks and surfing ALONG a wave, and me occasionally even standing up.

The bays along the coast are stunning, surfing under a gannet colony (Mauri bay), on a long black sand beach next to a blowhole (Muriwai), backing onto a national park (Piha), or an empty bay with distant towering cliffs and a slight risk of quicksand (Bethnalls beach) was a lot of fun. On Thursday we thought we'd try the east coast, which turns out is infinitely easier! The days of battling and struggling paid off and we finally felt as if we could surf. Red beach offered 4/5 foot waves in sets of 3 with 40 second gaps rolling in perfectly uniformly, a breeze to catch.

"That one?"
"Yeah alright, looks good"
"Oh hey, Jeppy, this wave is so easy to catch that I'm chatting to you whilst we are both surfing it, cool."

On the Thursday we also visited Jeppys uncle, aunt and cousins, it was lovely to be fed a stunning roast dinner and sleep in a real bed!

Semi-final weekend took us back to Auckland, where we enjoyed watching France sneak a victory over Wales, and endured a solid New Zealand victory. I did enjoy answering a Quade Cooper bashing comment though. To appreciate this part I need to fill you in on a few details: Kiwis are not very inventive or original when it comes to abuse or support, their only 'songs' are "All Blacks, All Blacks" repeated in a dull low drone, or a first name of one of the players to the same tune, providing of course that it is exactly two syllables long (longer or shorter and no chant exists). Lines of support are strictly limited to "Go the All Blacks" or "Yeah!". Slander is limited to Australia and England only, and pacticular hatred is reserved for Quade Cooper alone, because he is a New Zealander that chose to play for Australia, and the New Zealanders hate Australia with a passion. So the conversation goes:

"Go home Quade!"
"But he IS home"
...."Yeah!"

After the semis we traveled North. On Tuesday we visited Penny and Jamie and they were kind enough to take us out for a Thai dinner, and again provide a real bed! The cottage is stunning and backs onto rolling hills that are kind of like those in England but just a little bit better.

Wednesday and we traveled up to Bay of Islands, where we briefly contemplated hiring a small fishing boat for the afternoon, only to be refused due to the weather. We instead visited some waterfalls. The next day and we walked from the waterfalls to the treaty grounds (where the mauri's and settlers signed a document agreeing that the Mauris give up the country in exchange for nothing, at least that's what it says in the English version). The evening we spent in a beer garden with a couple of ciders playing cards, the first time the weather has really been up to it so a great relaxing afternoon (apart from Rick getting annoyed that yet again he is scum).

Yesterday morning was the drive back to Auckland, following the Kouri coast. We saw the "giant Kouri tree", the largest in the world, it's pretty large, and the "giant kauri boulders" which turned out to be 4 foot tall, so not so large.

In the afternoon Jeppy's mate Robin invited us onto his cruise liner, so aboard a pretty sweet boat we had a gym workout (Robin is a personal trainer) and a free steak dinner, followed by extremely cheap staff discounted drinks whilst watching Wales Australia!

That's all for now, apart from:..... ALLEZ LES BLUE!

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