Tag 87: Blown by the board

September 24, 2016

This, our last Saturday in New Zealand, is selling itself as if it were the last Saturday of the entire island and the apocalypse is imminent. We plan to make a final trip to the West Coast as I still long for the cool waters and crashing waves of the Tasman Sea. However, to reach our chosen destination, we must first conquer a scary mountain road shrouded in thick fog and becoming narrower with each curve. In poor visibility and heavy rain, it is only thanks to my excellent skills in defensive driving that we don't crash our 3.20m high camper van directly into a tree that leans about 3m across the road. After a somewhat challenging and audacious maneuver to avoid it, this obstacle is also behind us and the path to Piha, a surfer metropolis west of Auckland, is clear.

Once again, it is quite a task to find equipment to prove my skills. So, in torrential rain, we drive up and down the narrow streets of the hilly coastal village until finally, at the top end of the just completed mountain stage, we find a New Zealander who is willing to work on a Saturday.

It takes hard negotiations and pretending to have knowledge that I actually do not possess to finally end up with a surfboard that truly stands out in terms of its cut and buoyancy. Unfortunately, in a negative sense, and believe me, I can judge that by now.

But it's not only the below-average quality of the board under me that prevents a last breathtaking session. Despite the terrible weather, there are certainly seventy to eighty surfers in the water. From the outside, it looks like a huge colony of seals. Obviously, the New Zealanders, whose ancestors immigrated from the United Kingdom, still have a certain resistance to bad weather.

In addition to this struggle for the mediocre sea waves, there is also the wind, apart from the fact that I, equipped with a felt tree trunk under me and therefore somewhat insecure, have to join the end of the food chain. In principle, a wind directed towards the beach is even quite desirable for surfing, but today Mother Nature is blowing so wild that it is hardly possible to paddle in the direction of the waves, let alone maintain balance on the board.

Later, cold and soaked from all sides, I give up and try to consider the past two hours as a new experience in terms of wind and weather. But since I am rather disappointed to have to conclude the closing point of my athletic excursions of this trip in this way, I want to end it here briefly and succinctly.

Back in the car, Gudi and I decide to tackle the mountain stage once again in order to escape from the apparently flood-prone area as quickly as possible.

When we finally reach a campsite on the other side of the exciting serpentine road, I am more than exhausted and tired. So, today I go to bed at 5 p.m. and fall asleep quickly like a log.

At some point, it's already dark, Gudi wakes me up with the unfortunate realization that we are not allowed to park here. So, I once again have the honor of driving through Auckland for over an hour in order to finally be allowed to sleep legally at Orewa Beach, a national landmark.

Since we didn't take a single photo in Piha, the gallery of this blog is adorned with some snapshots of a spontaneous attempt to introduce the islanders to the nudist culture.