Around The World In 80 Waves

When buying some supplies I bought a bottle of sunflower oil to assist with my cooking. I thought I had secorely stowed it away where it couldn’t be broken.

However I am horrified when I stop for lunch on the road from Opunake to Wellington, where I will catch a ferry to the South island later in the day, because I climb into the back of the van to see cooking oil pouring out of the cupboard. 

The bottle has toppled over as a result of a bump in the road and a faulty cap has fallen off resulting in the whole bottle pouring out while I have been obliviously driving. The oil is on everything and it takes me ages to clear everything up.

It isn’t quite the damage of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or BP’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico but it takes me an eternity to clean up, and even then leaving a fine film of oil on just about everything in a three metre radius.

Not happy!

I arrive at Opunake on the Surf Highway a short time before the sun goes down and decide I have had enough of driving for the day. I fill up with fuel so that I am ready for a clean getaway in the morning and then head for the surf shop in town.

I have a great chat with the guys at Dreamtime Surf Shop who sort me out with a great deal for hiring this lovely 8’6″ so that I can get a surf in first thing in the morning.

They also give me directions to the campervan park situated next to one of the many breaks that are situated in the area, which is easy to find.

I could possibly have gone for a cheeky session before it got dark but I chose to enjoy the sun setting over the headland with a beer instead.

I am saving my energy for the incoming tide in the morning and spend the night reading my guide book as well as emptying my fridge of beer.

I can hear the ocean all night and leave the relative warmth of my van a couple of times in the night to see what the waves are looking like, hoping they will be similar at the same stage of the tide in the morning.

There is an electrical outlet to supply my vehicle and I make several failed attempts at tuning in the TV in my van, as well as charging up all my devices and cameras.

I top up the fresh water in my tanks and am even more delighted by the spot I chose when I wake up to it in the morning. One boiled kettle later I am heading over to the sand to check out the waves with a hot cup of coffee.

There are two ladies out, getting a surf before going to work and I see them catch some fun rides so it isn’t long before I have my own wetsuit on. The girls don’t stick around long and for a short while I have the break to myself before being joined in the water by a stand up paddle boarder and a bloke in a kayak.

Neither are either normally a welcome sight when you are surfing because of how many waves they steal from everybody else, but the two guys are pretty cool and there are more than enough waves to go around so we have a laugh in the morning sun. I catch four or five rides right across the bay and am having loads of fun, whooping and hollering along each one. The perfect start to any day.

All I need is one look at the road map of North Island to know that Highway 45 is the road I should be heading for next. It is called the Surf Highway.

My drive from Raglan through Hamilton and back onto the coast road is the first time I have seen the scenery in New Zealand in the daytime when it hasn’t been chucking it down with rain. The country is about the same size as the UK but only has a population equivalent to that of Wales.

All of that means that driving today is an absolute joy even if I am in a van which is over 7 metres long.

You simply don’t see anything else on the road. When I do find that somebody has caught me up because I am in a big van I slow down and wave people past whenever I can. It is a lovely day and I get a real feel for driving The Beast. 

Once I have reached the Surf Highway the road takes me to New Plymouth and a circular tour around the dormant volcano of Mount Taranki, which attracts your eyes no matter where you are in this area.

The volcano’s cone is capped in snow almost all year road, and amusingly pretended to be Mount Fuji in Japan when Tom Cruise filmed ‘The Last Samurai’ here.

The big industry around here is dairy and it would have been hard for me to get a picture of the mountain outside of the town without any cows in the shot.

It is my last night in town and I take a stroll into town from my campervan camp ground on the other side of the estuary.

This entails crossing this illuminated bridge, which is like something out of a Flash Gordon movie.

I think it is great but the fisherman trying to catch something out of the water below are less impressed by the racket I am making as I stride across.

My hearty “Good evenings” only merit more comments that I am scaring the fish off so I keep moving. 

We have decided to go for a few drinks with pizza, and I meet up with Anna and another surfer called Sam who we saw in the water earlier in the day.

It is a lovely evening and we have some great food but everybody is tired and I’m the only one for whom it isn’t a school night so we turn in early.

In the morning there is just enough time for Anna and I to enjoy a coffee together before big hugs all round and saying farewell once more.

Time to hit the road again. I’m heading south.

I meet up with Anna again later in the day and we go for a cruise in my van to check out the options. The swell has died through the day and I’m a bit disappointed that there is no point getting in at Indicators because the waves there aren’t really breaking. After seeing the epic tube rides caught there a few days earlier I was itching for a slice of that action myself.

It is not to be however, so the best of a bad bunch are the waves on offer are Wainui Beach. We jump into our wetsuits in the car park at the top of the hill and then stroll down to the sand where Anna shows me the channel in the break where you can avoid most of the waves whilst paddling out.

I have no problems getting out the first time and there is barely any wind so the conditions are really clean.

However as soon as I paddle into a few waves on the 8’0″ I have hired I am pearling the nose and then getting the full force of the wave driving me into the sand I’m trying to surf over. I then keep getting stuck inside eating plenty of sand as I struggle back out a few times through the breaking waves.

I do catch a few though and have a fun final session in the Raglan area. Anna is doing better than me and by the time she has got out I have boiled the kettle in the campervan and we can enjoy a hot drink whilst we savour the sun setting over the sea before heading back into town.

After surfing Whale Bay I drop Anna off and get the van rigged for the rest of my travels in New Zealand and try without success to catch up on the blog. The IT issues have become insurmountable using my old hardware so I give it up as a bad loss and after a few beers turn in early.

That inevitably means that I am up before dawn the following day and on my own I head straight for Manu Bay where I am treated to a gorgeous sunrise, whilst I get my wetsuit on. 

Anna was hoping to join me in the water and I also hoped to bump into Flash at the break because he paddles out  there every morning with his son, but neither can be seen so I am on my lonesome.

It is so early in the morning when I wade out over the rocks which I will be surfing over as the tide comes in, that there are only a handful of people in the water. I know it won’t last long because the conditions are PERFECT.

I am back on my game today and a bit gutted that nobody witnesses it. It doesn’t matter though because I’m having such a great surf and there are a few people in the water to have a laugh with.

I lost count of how many waves I caught but it was loads and I was riding from right on the point and then surfing around the coast until I had to jump off or surf straight into the breakwater which pushes out into the sea.

Fantastic session. I’m loving New Zealand.

After a night spent on one of the vans’s seats I am not in the freshest state the following morning, but am correctly told by Apollo that a board for the bed will be delivered later in the day. Once that is sorted my first order of business is sourcing a surfboard.

Sarah and Roddy’s brother-in-law, who is universally known as Flash, actually works in the local surf shop (www.raglansurf.com ) and helps me sort out a great hire deal on one of the locally made Hughes surfboards. Once that is collected Anna (who has the day off work) and I head off to the beach as soon as possible because there is a great swell breaking on the coast.

The waves today are fantastic at all the local breaks: Indicators, Whale Bay, Manu Bay and Wainui Beach. We opt for the less crowded break at Whale Bay that you see here and once more I climb into my wetsuit because the water is considerably colder than Tahiti where I last got wet.

Anna hasn’t surfed here before so the two of us figure out a way to scamper across the rocks lining the shore and then jump onto the back of one of the waves, before paddling madly to get out to the side and around the breaking section of the next ones.

Conditions seem to be perfect for the overhead waves, even if the winds are quite strong blowing off shore, and I paddle straight into the line up, while Anna takes a more tentative approach. Not sure which was the better option but for some reason I am all over the place today and as well as taking a beating from a significant number of waves am really struggling to catch anything, but am having a good time in the water regardless because there is a friendly atmosphere.

We can see people getting 5 second barrel rides along the coast at Indicators and I’m dying for a piece of the action in the waves breaking over the rocks lining the shore. Anna catches a few and I’m feeling a tad embarrassed by my lack of waves until I bag an absolute beauty which I ride all the way in snaking up and down the face. That us until two huge rocks (known as The Pinnacles) appear right in front of me in the break and I have to bail off the back of the board before a few nervy moments getting clear of trouble.

It is good to break my duck but after the rough night’s sleep, travel and taking a beating from the ocean for a few hours I’m shattered and am relieved that Anna feels the same way, so we paddle in.

I later discover that the bay is named after the whales that regularly appear in the line up. Orcas or Killer Whales are particularly common and I have to say I am quite glad that they left me alone while I was in the water. There have been no recorded attacks on humans by orcas in the wild, but even so I think the shock of something sixteen times the size of me, twice the size of an adult Great White Shark and with teeth the same size as my feet appearing suddenly out of the water next to me might literally frighten the life out of me!

The first place I am heading to in New Zealand is a small town called Raglan, which has been famous in surfing circles since it’s waves appeared in Bruce Brown’s classic surf film ‘The Endless Summer’.

The weather is awful and I get completely lost leaving Auckland so it is well after dark and I am tired by the time I pull up at the supermarket there upon arrival because I need to buy supplies.

I walk through the door of the supermarket and immediately bump into Anna at the vegetable section, who was one of two gorgeous Canadian surfers I met all the way back in Oahu and joined me for the first surf of my travels as well as touring most of the North Shore with me back in December.

Neither of us knew the other would even be in this part of the world let alone in town or going shopping, and two minutes either way and we would have missed each other entirely. Nobody else in the supermarket has a clue what is going on and is probably wondering why two people are jumping around hugging one and other only having seen the price of potatoes, but we are super stoked. Such an excellent surprise.

We spend a few minutes catching up on the waves we have been scoring on our different journeys, and I’m disappointed to discover that I only missed also seeing Alexa again by a week because she has just gone home.

“Do you want to come and hang out with me and my friends in our hot tub?” is not a question I have been asked often enough by pretty young surfer girls, and is certainly not an offer I need to consider for long. We complete our shopping and I give Anna a lift back up the hill to her place to enjoy a few beers. Whilst there I am treated to some wholesome home cooked food too. What a welcome. I think I will be liking New Zealand.

However it was a good job I was in a great mood, because when it is time to turn in I discover that  the numpties at the campervan hire company haven’t equipped me with the center-board necessary to make up the king size bed in the van. Denied!!

I enjoy a slow start today but spend a great morning with Sarah, who is desperate to show me the lovely view from their house in Auckland. Unfortunately the weather gods are not being kind and the rain was lashing down relentlessly, so much so that we could barely see the other side of the valley at one stage.

After a bit of shopping and securing the latest in a long line of foreign SIM cards to keep me online during my time in New Zealand, we head over to the offices of Apollo Camper-vans, where with the help of one of my surfing buddies back in the UK I have secured a great deal on a set of wheels to tour in. (Thanks Debs. x)

I’m not the smallest bloke in the world so I had told them when booking I did not want a vehicle that I would be banging around in. This has clearly been taken to heart because look at the monster van they handed over.

Sarah and I are in stitches, but managed to get this picture of what I christened ‘The Beast’ in one break in the rain before I headed south.

I am going to be touring around New Zealand for a couple of weeks, but straight away my time here is a day shorter than I thought I had, having lost a day when I travelled westward over the international date line. What happened to Monday?

I haven’t had enough time anywhere to see everything so I am used to it by now, and will see as much as I can.

I have flown into Auckland on the North Island but arrived too late for me to do much more than land myself.

I had hoped to be met by some of my friends at the airport but the information on my plane’s landing time that I had been supplied with was way off, and unsurprisingly they didn’t fancy a six hour wait at the airport for me to turn up.

Roddy and Sarah used to be neighbours of mine back in London and once again it is great to see familiar faces on my travels.

We spend a lovely evening catching up on gossip over a few beers and talking about everyone’s adventures during the twelve months since we had last seen each other, but it is a school night for everybody else and we turn in before it gets too late.

Not ‘too late’ being about 5am on the Tahitian clock, which I was still thinking it was that is.