I've always wondered what it would be like to pick up and move to another country to live and work... What!? you say. Yes... I have done this for short periods of time. It's a far different endeavor though to take a full time job and move your entire life across an ocean on a quasi-permanent basis... my jaunts have never been for more than 4 months at a time. I had the chance to observe "vie de verite" by visiting my friends Wade Osborne and his much, much better half ;) Dacotah Krieg in Tauranga, New Zealand (the photo at left is from the top of Mt. Manganui... excellent exercise walking to the top most mornings with Dacotah when wade had to run off to the salt mines ;-)Wade and I go back a few years to grad school at OSU. As he described it he hadn't had the opportunity to travel while in the US Navy as his duty was land based in Norfolk, VA so when he had the chance to work as an engineer in NZ he took it... smart lad eh? My two muchachos were excellent hosts and made it super easy to slip right into the beach lifestyle as soon as I arrived.
Taruanga (northeast coast of the north island) is an interesting place and distinctly separated between the beach front communities around Mt. Manganui and the industrial center near the port there. As you might guess from the above photo the place is known for killer surf... unfortunately the season for swell is in the Summer about three or four months after my visit... Dacotah and I still managed to paddle out a few times though and towards the end of my visit we all road-tripped out to Raglan to visit one of the most famous left hand breaks in the whole wide world. On that same trip we visited the Waitomo Caves (Wai = water, tomo = hole in the native Maori language) which some of you may have seen in the opening segment of the recent BBC doco "Planet Earth". Think river tubing, meets spelunking, meets summer fireflies and you'll get a close idea.
The only thing that I regretted about my visit with W and D was leaving... can't wait to visit again.
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As you can tell (if you zoom out a bit) this part of the coast gets slammed in the summer months with north pacific storm activity.
Striking a pose prior to heading in to the Waitomo Caves...
A shot of the grand cave courtesy of about a hundred other people's blogs... couldn't find the original source!
After the caves we headed a bit north to Raglan... very famous left hand point break that under the right conditions can break for a kilometer or better. We stayed at a backpacker accomodation tucked back in to the coastal hills and on this particular morning I woke up with the sun and found this platform by chance for an early morning yoga practice... Wade and Dacotah showed up a bit later looking for me to tell me about this great platform built for yoga classes... how lucky!
The surf was actually breaking while we were there... I paddled out a bit down from this spot (Whale Bay) as it looked too heavy for me and was reported to be closely patroled by the leash cutting "Whale Bay Boys". Manu Bay proved to be knarly as well... particularly so since I was on a new, too short for me board and hadn't surfed anything serious for months... I made it out though and managed to sit off to the side with a front row seat to see surfing par excellance from a crowd of a bout 40 surfers on a +meter overhead day with a 10 meter take-off zone.
This is so Wade... I actually visited these folks twice as I was able to stop in Aukland (and they were kind enough to drive up to meet me) on my way back up from the South Island before heading to Australia. We took the day to visit the National Arboretum and the National Museum... very, very cool as these things go.
Year round beauty close up...
... and at a distance.
I missed my mark a bit by having an outdated guide book... I thought there would be ample opportunity for delving in to Maori culture all over New Zealand... as it turns out one of the only places left is in Rotorua and by some standards even that is considered a "tourist trap" as it's a representation of the Maori of the past... a culture that by en large is struggling with assimilation/cultural identity issues like most other embattled 1st peoples. I will say this though... despite tensions over past treaties between the Maori and Anglos, relations in NZ are far better than what I saw working for the Indian Health Service here in the US and eons better than experience later showed between the Aboriginies and Anglos in Australia. Not knowing that Rotorua was my best shot I passed through by bus on my way in and out of Tauranga. Fortunately there is a large collection devoted to Maori culture at the National Museum... this shot is of a traditional Maori Wharenui (meeting house) built inside the museum. I had the wharenui to myself for about 15 minutes so I slipped of my shoes and sat inside... it was so quite... I swear the place breathes and has a life of it's own.
This is a close-up of the aft section on a Maori Waka (carved wooden canoe)... the bust is of Ranginui (Sky Father) the male character in the Maori creation myth.
We also had the chance to watch a cultural performance of a Maori Haka... it's commonly referred to as "war dance" via it's use by the National All Blacks rugby team but is actually more often used as a way of welcoming visitors...
I spoke with this fellow (James) for a bit after the performance and asked if Anglos were encouraged or even allowed to learn traditional Maori song and dance... he said that there were quite a few non-native folks that did and he encouraged it as long as it was respectful and well rounded (i.e. not just to be aggresive and learn the "uber-cool haka) so... next time I'm in NZ I'm going to get my own loin cloth and take a class!
Here's a wee bit of video from the performance...
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