Day 2 - surf's up in Raglan!

Day 2 - Check out Ihaka and Jay hanging out by the Stray bus, as we stop for a gorgeous photo pic.. its sunny, its sunny! In true Stray style, Ihaka took us off the beaten path to meet some of his family near the town of Hamilton! In fact, his brother-in-law, Tiki (I think!) came on the bus and chatted away to us; asking if we were enjoying our stay and thanking us for visiting his beautiful country - what a lovely man! And he gave us a traditional Maori greeting for happiness for the rest of our trip!

Today we moved on from Hahei to Raglan, and the scenery was incredible! Raglan is a lovely wee community that lies in a beautiful, sheltered harbour, famous for its waves. So famous that much of the classic 1964 film The Endless Summer,was shot here -apparantly its all about surfies roaming the globe looking for the perfect wave, man!!!

The beach itself was incredible - it just went on and on. Unfortunately, the waves were a wee bitty wee when we arrived, and the surfer boys werent too optimistic but thank goodness for bad weather. As soon as it started raining (again!) the surf came up and life was good! For those of us not surfing, who strangely enough just wanted to hang out in the beautiful sunshine (which only lasted about half an hour!), we ended up getting a bit soggy, to say the least but hey, the suroundings were so gorgeous it didn't really matter!

We were staying at the Karioi Lodge, surrounded by native bush and quite near the beach. There is a gourmet chef here so of course we all took advantage of this and had an incredilble meal here - yup, as I've said before, its a tough life for backpackers! Afterwards, we walked up to the back of the lodge where there was a Flying Fox (aka a zipline..). Anyway, we all took turns hurtling through the air in the middle of the night, in complete darkness.. hilarious.

And lovely too, 'cos we got to see lots of glow worms, our first introduction to these wee critters, who are a big tourist attraction in NZ, and I think are only found here and maybe in Australia? Of course, no evening is complete without a few wee drinkies and a game of Charades! We sat in the lodge barn, and hammered out some classics; from Gandi (me of course!) to Whale Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and many others! Another great night finished up with singing, guitar playing and lotsa chatting!