Some water shots..

Stu killin' it skate style

Stu wishing he was half his size!

Racetrack

Me blowing a beautiful wave.. stuck going over the falls..

Trying for a rare left coverup

Looks like indo or something. My arm sure is happy..

Almost.. little too small..

Well good news. Zac's ankle is only sprained which means no cast, and hopefully a speedy recovery. Hopefully it doesn't act like my ankle did earlier this year when I sprained it.. In the meantime he's taken up the role as personal water photographer! I picked out the best shots of the morning to put on here, he couldn't get as many as he wanted though, the battery on Stu's camera died. Needless to say its charging as I type. Zac turns out to be a great water photographer, not something that's easy to do. You can click on the photos to make them bigger if you haven't figured this out already! Enjoy.

Zac's b-day, sick waves, and folded feet

me

Stu

me

bird in tree

Makarori (sp?) point

A little too excited...

the point again

Zac's folded foot

my mush turn

Zac's better mush turn

Zac doing something

Zac doing something backside...surfing that is...

Stu in da pocket

Stu on the coping

Zac stylin'

Stu about to get shacked!

Ridiculous

Ridiculous again. Perfection

Going green.. wind farm inland.

Stu having a snooze on the drive

Mt. Taranaki

Our attempt at fishing

Balmy palmys

Well we're back in Gisbourne. We drove from wavehaven to Napier in one day, stayed at a super cool hostel run by some friendly old guy, and drove up to Gis the next morning. We've been camping at the flying nun hostel. We have our tents set up in the yard, that way we pay way less, but still get to use the kitchen, showers, and wireless! The surf sucked monday and tuesday, so we got the great idea of going fishing... We bought hand casters for 5 bucks each, and tried our luck, but all we came home with was the horrible smelling bait. We cooked that for dinner anyway....... j/k! For Zac's birthday, we surfed really early in the morning at Wainui beach. The waves were perfect (see above..) and we all got awesome waves. We ended up going back out later, and Zac folded his foot trying to land an air. He says no worries, but we took him in today to get x-rayed.. No results yet, but in our professional opinion (us looking at the xrays), don't think anythings broken, just a sprain. I've been trying to force Ibuprofin down him, but he's not taking it. We stayed in and made pizza for Zac's birthday dinner. Unfortunately, we fell for the 2 for $5 deal and got pizza that tasted like the cardboard it sat on. Oh well. Today Stu and I surfed Makarori's while Zac shot photos of the place that made it seem a lot better than it felt to surf. Spent the rest of the day going from Kiwi doc to Kiwi doc trying to figure out the NZ health system. Turns out it's way cheap! $30 bucks for an x ray order, and free x-ray! Ridiculous!

Hope everyone's doing good in the states. Stay warm! Cheers!

left points everywhere!

Place called rocky lefts. Seriously sketchy wave.

This one's called gravestones. Nice long wave when they connected.

Ahu Ahu's. Awesome rippable left, good right on super low tide. Some dry rocks to carve around too.

We are back in Gisbourne, camping in the yard of the Flying Nun backpacker hostels. We surfed Stent road in the morning friday, Ahu's later, and Gravestone's that night. Passed up a $40 dollar reggae concert that everyone at wavehaven was going to because of the price and we were pretty tired. Saturday we decided to take off, ended up driving around Taranaki, crossing back to the east coast and staying the night in Napier. We drove up to Gisbourne this morning, but the waves are pretty flat today. There should be something in the next few days though. I think we've driven more than 2500 Km already! Ridiculous. Hope everyone's doing well. I'm already missing the espresso machine that was free to use at wavehaven... back to the safeway select kona roast in my french press mug...

Stu eating a PB&J

I'm sure Stu's got some Maori ghost after him after this one...

The island. You can see the wave starts on the left and wraps around the back side.

Random spot check

Uh.. yeah.. no clue

Kuma Patch

You can sorta see the line in the water where it was shallow enough to walk/wade/paddle across to the island.

Hawai River

Post session bath

Why we ended up camping at the beach the night before...

I think Zac's still feeling a bit tipsy...

Another bath..

The downside to sleeping on the beach.. SAND FLEAS!

Stu washing off the night before.

The night before.

Zac started a bit early..

Stu the photographer

This one's for Ken.

Back Beach

REAL organized..

Sweet view from the road

Weird statue thingy.