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Published: January 12th 2009
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Hello again!!
Got to Raglan early afternoon, did some emergency clothes washing in the sink and then started our surfing lesson at 3pm… by which point we had already been up 12 hours! The first hour we spent in the gym learning the technique, then we headed down to the beach, squeezed ourselves into wetsuits, straped our surf boards to our leg and then off we went! The guy told us that everyone who learns the technique perfectly in the gym somehow always manage to forget everything they’ve learnt as soon as they get in the water because they panic…we quickly proved him right but all in all we didn’t do too badly…I managed to catch the wave properly and surf all the way into shore quite a few times but it was so frustrating because as soon as you did it, you would assume that you had gotten the hang of it and would be able to do it right every time after that but no no no…. it only seem to work each 20 attempts! But still… definitely got better towards the end, but it was soooo tiring because each time you would need to carry your surfboard
back out to sea fighting against the current and I also managed to get a few peoples wakeboards in my head though which hurt! Although the most exhausting part was probably trying to squeeze myself out of my wetsuit afterwards… it honestly took aaaages! I loved it though and definitely want to do it again! :o)
We then headed back to the hostel, got showered and changed and then started cooking our New Years Eve meal, which was spaghetti and garlic bread… not very glamorous! By the time we started cooking our meal at about 8pm Karlyn had already finished another bottle of Jack Daniels, which was again slightly concerning but he seemed quite sober! We then had a few drinks and then headed for the hourly shuttle bus into Raglan! Me and 3 English guys (because they were waiting for me!) managed to miss the bus so we ended up hitchhiking into town, with a woman who lived just down the road from the hostel and saw us standing in the pouring rain, and eventually found the others! It wasn’t really that great to be honest though… Raglan is really small and we didn’t know any of the
songs they were playing in the club, but we bought a bottle of champagne between us just before midnight and we all held hands and sang Auld Langs Eyne, saw then end of the fireworks and then headed back to the hostel as we were all sooo tired after getting up at 3am! We were all looking forward to having a drink together and then going to bed…however, the evening did not end well as we got back to the hostel to find Karyln falling all over the place soooo drunk and we were all completely sober! We spent ages talking to him and asking him how on earth we were going to leave at 8am in the morning, which was in 6 hours, when he was so drunk! He said it was fine etc and that he would be up on time and sober again! Some of the group were really angry and walked off to have a group meeting….we all agreed that there was no way that he would be sober enough to take us the next morning, others said they thought he was drunk-driving that morning when we left for Hot Water Beach at 4am etc! We all agreed that we would refuse to get on the bus the next morning and try and phone Stray the next morning and say we weren’t happy! I completely agreed with everyone and said I wouldn’t get on the bus the next day either but I still felt very sorry for him, knowing he would lose his job so I went to go and talk to him again - he was still milling around trying to find more alcohol, I spent a while talking to him and trying to make him drink water (with Chris, one of the English guys, supervision as he said Karlyn wasn’t to be trusted on his own with me!) which didn’t work at all… he didn’t want anything except for alcohol and was talking absolute rubbish! He then admitted to me that he was drunk that morning when he drove us to the beach and that he didn’t even remember leaving Kai behind, at that point I told him to go to bed and walked off to tell the others that we were DEFINITELY not getting in the bus with him again! Fortunately we were spared the awkwardness of phoning Stray and confronting Karlyn because a Stray manager had been staying there that night, seen him and had arranged for another driver, who was staying there because she had no passengers on her bus, to take us instead! So we were all very relieved and our new driver was really lovely, she was new and we were her first group but she was amazing and drove on the right side of the road which is always nice!! :o)
So….we left just a bit behind schedule on New Years Day after a very eventful New Years Eve…the only good thing was that none of us were hungover! :o)
Muchos amor xxxxx
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