Surfing Raglan

I'm going to apologize in advance for having a very long blog tonight but it's worth it. Also, sorry for having so many pictures without people. The landscape here alone deserves it's own blog entry.
Our 2 week trek across NZ has started out with a bang. On Sunday, we packed up all of our stuff, took our non-essential stuff to storage, checked out of our apartment (goodbye Waldorf) and hit the road. Our first stop was Rotorua. It's a couple hours southeast of Auckland and we'd heard good things about it so we thought we might as well check it out.

 This is downtown Rotorua. It's a cool place with a bunch of little cafes. We had a problem because it was Sunday and this place shuts down on Sundays. Good to know.

 We at some lunch at a Japanese place and then headed down the street to some kind of local fair. It looked like people went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of junk, set up a tent, and tried to sell their junk.

 This is the fair. Look at the yellow trailer. American donuts and American hot dogs? First of all, what other kinds of donuts and hot dogs are there? Second, can't we be known for something other than food that is terrible for you?

 After the excitement of the fair wore off, we checked out a thermal park. It had some cool thermal pools that were steaming. The best part of this place was that it was free. What can I say? We're cheap.

Liquid hot magma! Ok, maybe it's just boiling mud but let's just pretend it's magma.

After the thermal park, we didn't have much to do because everything was closed so we headed to a place that grew blueberries and made all kinds of products from them including blueberry wine and liqueur. These are the fields.

 

 They had blueberry ice cream so I had to try it out. Not too shabby.

 

That was Rotorua. Nothing too crazy but it was fun seeing another place. Next time we'll plan in advance and do more of the fun things around town. Sunday evening we left Rotorua and headed east to Raglan on the west coast.  The drive there was pretty uneventful but we found some great scenery as we got closer to our hostel. 

This is the view from the road that heads up the side of the mountain and to the surf place.

This is from the same road but a little higher up. This country isn't short on good views.

Then we got to our hostel. This place is great. It's tucked halfway up a mountain in the middle of the jungle and is just a bunch of people our age from all over the world hanging out. The surf school owns the hostel so we see all of the people pretty much all day long. This place is one of the cooler places I've been in a long time.

The sign to our place

 This is the driveway up to the surf school lodging. Did I mention it was in the jungle?

 We checked in and got all of our stuff set up. There are 4 bunks per room. This is Erin showing us those bunks

 This is a what the front row of rooms looks like with wet beach clothes hanging off the balcony. The kitchen and living room are up ahead. It doesn't look like much but I promise it's great.

 Area in front where people meet before heading to the beach. They keep surfboards in that shed.

 This is another little kitchen area that is off the driveway area in the previous picture. Smaller than the main kitchen but it was just right for us.

This is the main living room where everyone hangs out. We watched Jurassic Park with people from all over the world tonight. I know there are people here from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and some other places that I'm blanking on right now. Anyways, they all like Jurassic Park.

 

 This is the other half of the living room with the main kitchen in the background.

After making some dinner last night, we found out that there was a bus that takes everyone into town at 8:30 and returns at 1 am. We decided it'd be something fun to do since we haven't gone out pretty much our whole time here. By far the best part of the night was Erin getting "iced". You may remember that from last year. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a game where you have to chug a Smirnoff Ice. It's terrible but funny. Hey, we're just trying to bring some frat games to New Zealand.

 First, Erin tried to show me her robot dance skills. I wasn't impressed.

 Then we got down to business. I was explaining the rules of icing to the rookies

 These two had no idea what they were in for.

Downing that Smirnoff

 

 And they were so proud of themselves when they were done. 

We got some much needed sleep following the icings and had a nice surf lesson this morning. It was a ton of fun! None of us had ever been surfing so they didn't expect much out of us. We started out on flat ground with learning the basics of how to stand up on the board. Then it was off to the water for some extreme surfing action. It started out slow, with most of us having a hard time staying on our boards but after more and more tries we were actually able to get up every now and then. I felt bad that the instructors had to put up with us but they were really patient. There weren't any broken bones but we are all sore from the workout you get from surfing. I wish I had pictures of us actually surfing but we didn't get to that today, we'll try to get some tomorrow. I guess some pictures of the beach we surfed at will have to do for tonight. 

 These were our boards before we terrorized them. They were big and soft so that beginners can't hurt themselves or anyone else.

 This is the beach. It was bigger than the other beaches we've been to and seemed to stretch all the way back to the city.

The beach looking the other way.

Us walking back up the hill from the beach after finishing surfing. What this doesn't show is the wetsuits we just took off. Those were great for keeping us warm but weren't the prettiest things.

After surfing, we drove up to Te Toto Gorge. This place had the coolest views we've seen anywhere in New Zealand, and that's saying something. Here are some pics...

 Erin and Cindy making their way to the viewing platform

 Chase acting like a Japanese tourist again, this time on the viewing platform

 A better shot out at the ocean.

 Looking to the right you could see the gorge. Even further in the distance you can almost see Raglan

 This is looking back to the left.

 They have steep cliffs in New Zealand

 Another picture of the gorge

Some more scenery

This was the mountain behind us. This cloud just seemed to cling to the top of it but it was mostly sunny everywhere else.

 And this is just for proof that I was there.

Well I'm gonna wrap it up because I'm almost out of internet usage. I'll try to get more pictures of us actually surfing tomorrow. We're getting some more surfing in tomorrow morning and then it's back to Auckland tomorrow night. More updates to come soon!