When the sun shines in New
Zealand, the landscape is positively lambent, offset by a turquoise sea that is
delightfully banded by white or black sand beaches.
The beaches stretch for miles (literally, 90 of them at the top of the
north island) and the fields and hills are dotted by cows, sheep and--very,
very rarely--a human being.
The people are a hardy
folk. I think the reason their rugby
team, the All Blacks, is so good is because there are a disproportionate number
of HUGE dudes walking around with broad upper bodies and tree trunks for legs.
Probably from wrassling livestock all the time--this remark shared by a kiwi
pal I hung with in Bali, not my original thought. You couldn’t go 10km without
seeing an All Black flag flying somewhere.
Whether due to the influence of
the “Lord the Rings” being filmed here or a condition pre-dating the film,like hobbits the kiwis frequently
spurn shoes. You can see this on display in cities like Auckland,
the airport, or people walking along a road in the rain. Don’t matter. Shoes
not required. Incidentally, if you are
total tool with money to burn (and I say this as a big LOTR fan) you can take a
12 day “Lord of the Rings” tour of New Zealand for NZ $8000. Or visit the site
yourself: www.yesiamatotaldoofuspleasetakemymoney.com.
The Kiwis are a friendly bunch
as far as I have encountered. I have rarely if ever—fine, probably never--paddled
out to a break and have a guy literally paddle over and greet
you with a big smile and a “Howit?” And
that happened all the time. Even when Tal dropped in on some guy during one
session, the Kiwi was chatty and awfully cool about it. And last night, as we were checking the surf,
some nice Piha locals rolled a huge fat joint next to us and asked us if we
were interested. They looked like surf hooligans, but nice kids. And get this: the customs agent as I was heading home asked me,
“Enjoy yourself in NZ, mate? Been awful wet.” He seemed genuinely concerned I
might not have had a good time. I mean,
that’s some hospitality.
Now, that gets me to the “when
the sun shines in NZ” opening. The sun did not shine in NZ much. Roughly 2
days. Otherwise, pretty much perpetual light to heavy rain. When you are living
in a van down by the beach, that really
sucks. Now, that wouldn’t matter much if you were just surfing all the time
right? You’re already wet!
Yes, but the surf largely disappointed. And
my god, did we chase. Up the island, down the island, back up the island. Piha, Shiprwrecks Bay, Raglan, Ruapuke, back
to Piah, Muriwai. We scored maybe two good days with a decent swell and the
strong offshore winds that you here so much about in terms of why NZ can be a
great place to surf. The rest was, at best, windy beach break conditions. Some guy quipped after a middling session
that “If you have a helicopter, you can always find good surf in New Zeland.” The theory being that if the winds are
onshore on the west coast, you can hit the east coast where they’ll be
offshore. The pisser is that I forgot to pack my helicopter. And that the swell
was mostly hitting the west coast, no matter what the wind was doing so it
might not have mattered.
Many years ago, I was thinking
of going cycling in NZ with my pal Noel. My mom asked me, “Why would you go to
there? It’s just like northern California.” Turns out, as with many things, mom
was right. I should add: it’s just like
Norcal when the rain hits in Nov-Dec.
Cold, wet, challenging surf conditions with a lot of rugged, chunky slop
that pummels you frequently in return for low quality waves. Being back in wet suit instead of in board
shorts was no fun either.
There is obviously a ton more
to do in NZ than surf, especially if you like the outdoors. And I did think
about hanging up the surf agenda, but the rain still woulda made hiking or
going to the beach subprime. I shoulda gone to Marlborough and spent my time
wine tasting, but we were tempted and then betrayed over and over again by the
surf forecasts.
Oh, by the way, you can get NZ
wine cheaper at home than you can here. Even the lamb was surprisingly
expensive. Someone, not entirely credible, attributed this to a rough spring
with lots of frost that killed off lots of little lambies, thus driving up
prices. (In case you are a Wall Street exec and thus perhaps don’t understand economic
theory: When supply goes down, prices go
up; which is bad for my wallet. Think about it as sort
of like when you innovate financial products that create no value to society (e.g.
credit default swaps) to hedge your highly leveraged transactions on dubious
mortgage derivatives and there is a huge run on liquidity as market confidence
expires and your firm collapses, which
is also bad. And in the case of the
lambies, there is no $700 billion dollar tax payer option to bail them out.
With weather forecasts
encouraging the purchase of an ark for the foreseeable future, I decided to
blow this taco stand and head home 2 days early. I can go surf in sloppy beach
break in the cold at home for less money and not live in a van down the river.
Sorry, New Zealand, things
didn’t work out. But I still respect you and I hope we can be friends.
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