Smorgasboarder_11_May-2012

“In the ignition, bro... no
one around here’s going
to steal your stuff.
Don’t stress, come surf”
TRAVEL
SURF TRIP
as we had checked the forecast, but we figured
we would head there and hope for the best.
Looking at a map, there was no direct route
across the country so we picked a town along
the way and headed to Taupo.
I’m not sure why, but the Kiwis have a habit
of thrillseeking any way they can. If there is
something natural to jump off, fly from, roll
down, tumble with, raft over, or free fall out
of, they have it covered. If there are no natural
structures, no problem, you can jump off the
highest building in Auckland, of course you can!
When I asked Shayne about this, he just looked
at me and said: “just looking for something to
do bro”. At the time, we were standing at the
top of a mountain in Hawkes Bay, with a road to
the top that I was scared to drive up. On arriving
at the top we saw two hang gliding launch
ramps and a dozen or so mountain bike tracks
that I would honestly not even walk down let
alone ride a pushie down – these people are
crazy, and I love that!
So we arrived in Taupo around lunchtime. I had
missed the last fuel station leaving Hawkes
Bay thinking we had enough to get us to our
destination. While the guys chilled in the back I
quietly sweated as the needle on the fuel gauge
headed south and stayed there with the light
on for a very long time. When we eventually
reached the town I pumped 79.74 litres of diesel
into an 80-litre tank. Easy, more than enough to
spare!
It was a perfect blue-sky day. With no chance of
a wave that day, it was agreed that we would
jump out of an airplane, enough said, just do it,
and it was done...
Still on our mission to get to Taranaki, we took
the most direct route we could see on the map,
“The Forgotten World Highway”. Holy hell they
named it well. Take a pen and a piece of paper,
blindfold yourself and try and draw concentric
circles on a page in three different directions.
The resulting squiggle will give you somewhat
of an idea as to what this road is like. We
twisted and wound ourselves around for hours
through the valleys and mountains, awestruck
by the beauty and terrified by the bends, until
we finally came out the other side to ‘Changs
Taranaki Chinese Buffet’, we were in Taranaki!
Digging into some crispy skinned fried chicken
and washing it down with a soft drink I heard
Josh mutter: “Health starts tomorrow boys”
The gamble to head to Taranaki did not pay off.
The winds were howling and the swell kind of
small, add to that the clouds had rolled in and
the views of the volcano that we had hoped
to see were totally whited out. We flicked
through a few maps, logged onto the local swell
forecasting charts and made a plan to head
back to Raglan for our last day’s surfing.
A few hours later we were soaking up a few
slightly onshore but very ridable point break
lefts. We surfed until the tide totally bottomed
out and then headed into town for one last
mission on the trip. James had been talking
about a Maori style tattoo for some time and
rumor had it that there was a local guy that
would be able to help. We asked around and
found his details from the guy in the video store.
James and Simon discussed ideas and
symbolism before Simon said a prayer of Maori
origin and got to work with needle and ink. It
turns out the size of the piece was going to
require a long time to complete. While James
sat through until 1am, the rest of us made camp
in the motorhome, listened to Josh strum a few
tunes and had an early night. James was going
hard with Simon to get the body art complete.
They began again at 7:00am for another three
hours, leaving us just enough time to get the
motorhome back to the rental company and us
to the airport.
may/jun 2012
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