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Countdown weekend #8 – surfing!

With the clock now ticking we are squeezing the most out of our remaining time in New Zealand. With 8 weekends to go, we spent this one surfing in Raglan. After a lazy Saturday morning, we made our way south for an arvo surfing lesson in Manu Bay. The weather was good (not great as there was a little bit of a chill in the air). Luckily our pre-paid lesson (thanks, GrabOne) included wetsuit hire though making us comfy as in the water. We both had a successful lesson and each managed to stand up a handful of times. Brendan being the more adventurous of us actually managed to stand up while catching a wave whereas by the time I made it to the standing position the wave was mostly past me leaving me to surf the back of the whitewater.  It definitely went better than my last surfing lesson though and made me excited for the next time I get a chance to try.

The only complaint was that the surfing company was a bit over-zealous in their bookings leaving a third of us without boards! Brendan was gracious enough to let me practice on his board a few times before we hit the water rather than practicing on my board-outline in the sand. And then the instructors were good about getting people to swap boards around in the water. That, along with the fact that they let us keep the boards out an extra hour and they offered us free board hire the next time we are around, meant we weren’t too fussed about it in the end. I was knackered after 3 hours, and based on Brendan’s whinging the next day, I think he was too! :) 


Saturday night, we watched the sun set over the Tasman from Inspiration Point while we reflected on the last 4.5 years’ worth of adventures (with a bottle of wine of course). Then later that night, we got some great southern hemisphere star-gazing and (finally) glow worms! We have been meaning to do this hike in the Waitekeres that has glow worms for the last few years, but have never made it. These glow worms were a mere 100m from our hostel though, so how could we miss them. They were magical. Apparently they are not worms at all (google it, it's quite interesting). The craziest thing was how they could throw off your depth perception. We were looking at a vertical soil embankment just off the road that we had seen in the daylight earlier, but with the glow worms in the dark, it looked like deep caves!

We filled Sunday with a gratuitous road trip (as we do) and a beach that is accessed via tunnel (as we do). :) What I will miss about New Zealand is arriving at such a spectacular beach (black sand, sheer cliff faces, freshwater waterfalls, brilliant blue/green ocean…) and realizing that you have it completely to yourselves. We went rock-hopping, swimming, strolling…. It was fantastic. It was also very sad when we had to leave to make it back to Auckland as we had gone WAY out of our way to get down there. We did manage to swing through Hamilton on our way home though to call in at the beer bar happy hour. We found that the vibe of the happy hour had completely changed since the last time we had been there and decided we will not need to stop in again, but it was good while it lasted.

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