Rolling, Rolling, Rolling.......Rawhide

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Our quest and mission after leaving Auckland was to travel South steadily, stopping along the way for regular wee stops, but making our way down to the South Island to get some adventure time in before the olds turn up.

So with Stuart logic we headed West for the beaches of Phia and Muriwai, they are known for their surfing prowess and powerful undertows. Both the beaches were being battered with strong winds and storm surf, so it was just left to taking some time on the black volcanic sand and testing out the newly bought thermals. I don't know if you guys out there have tried on long fitting underwear before, perhaps the kind that your gran used to wear, (I know that Frank is very attached to his pair) but it makes you feel a lot warmer.

After a nice campsite stop we opted to head on through Hamilton and to the coastal surf mecca of Raglan. I can appreciate that if I was reading this and I was not really interested in aqua activities then I would find this bit somewhat boring, but let me put it this way, Raglan is to surfing what mood swings are to the female psyche, they just fit. Raglan is a quiet place that seems to have a lot going on (backward sentence but true), it comes to life when the hoards of tourists arrive around the summer break of Xmas. We camped by the river and tried to weather the continuous bouts of rain that seemed to have caused floods at the site. After popping into Raglan and buying a new wetsuit it was off the the famed surf break of Manu Bay. It is somthing of pure beauty and thankfully the waves were good enough to get in.

We were getting used to living back in a van with close comfort and poor hygiene being the usual story for most days. As the weather was pretty awful we decided to head South again on a bit of a driving mission. Many of the more famed tourist areas would be revisited once the grey panther and Elmer Fud arrived.

So over the next couple of days we free camped at various places along the main highway, sometimes being woken by wild pigs or being kept awake by trains chugging past our heads. However over two days we made it to Wellington, where we could get the ferry across to Picton on the South Island. We had just a day in Wellington to have a look around as we were waiting for the evening ferry. It is a nice city with plenty going on but our main focus was on the horizon and the ever decreasing weather that was settled over the Cook strait. It turned out that the swell was seven meters when we went across but we survived and arrived down South without too much hassle.

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