update!

Well we hung out in Wellington for 3 days waiting for a ferry, which was cool. Fun little town for sure, it's the same size people wise as Eugene, but has a bigger and more lively downtown than P-town and Seattle put together. Jumped on a ferry Saturday morning, and got to Picton, where we stayed one night. We snorkeled cable bay Sunday for about 3 hours. It was awesome! We saw a couple huge stingrays, an octopus, cuddlefish, seahorse, jellys, and a bunch of fish! We stayed at a really nice hostel in Nelson last night, and today, we tried to snorkel another bay. The water was way murkier though today, and the weather much more Oregon-esque. We're staying in Nelson tonight, and heading towards Westport tomorrow. Hope the surf's good in Oregon, and everyone's staying safe!

Photo update

So these photo's are not all mine just to put that out there, some are Zac's, some are Matlida's and Gabriella's. The one's with me in them-most definitely not mine.

Oreogn Surf Shop add for sure

Rock jump!

Zac's rock jump

Double barrel!

Cave we swam into!

Barrel at Cathedral Cove!

Picture of a person taking a picture of a person taking a picture. Ridiculous.

Tiny town of Piha

Gizzy sunset. East coast is weird.

Cool little thing.

Surf lesson!

Up on Lion Rock.

Matilda on Lion Rock.

Stu doing some cooking.

Haha

Crazy carving thing on Lion Rock

Taking pictures of a dead fish..

Barrel??

How this place was crowded was beyond me. Another day at Piha.

Gizzy perfection

Speaks for itself

Clouds.

Quick update

Sorry for the lack of updates the past week. I started last weekend (the 22nd and 23rd) by hurting my back on a 1 foot closeout (er.. I mean 10 foot...) and joined Zac on injury reserve. Stu's the sole surviving crew member. I met two Sweedish backpackers named Matilda and Gabriella at the flying nun. After talking to them for a while, we found out we were planning on going to the same place so I offered them a ride. The car ride was cramped to say the least, but it was awesome to have them along. They are actually some of the coolest people I've ever met. We went to Piha and hung out with them for the rest of the week (the surf SUCKED, whoever says that place gets good lies.) They were heading off to OZ to live for 3 + months, so we took them to Auckland on Friday so they could get stuff in order before they left. It sucked for sure to say goodbye, but hopefully we'll cross paths again. We took of for the coromandel peninsula, and hot water beach. It was a neat area, surf kinda sucked but the beaches were super nice. Cathedral Cove was amazing, and we also tried our luck at spearfishing. I think that we are the worlds worst fishermen. Ran into Auckland today and picked up Eli! Drove the rest of the day and we're now back in New Plymouth at the shoestring backpackers hostel. No pictures because there's no wireless, sorry! Maybe tomorrow. Eli's full of stories from his 2 month sailing trip from Tahiti to NZ. Absolutley amazing sounding trip for sure. I'll try and post some pics tomorrow!

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!