We'd not been sure how to spend our last few days in the North Island. Stay local or drive off and see more tourist sights? We didn't want to find that we'd exhausted ourselves trying to 'tick off' every possible sight, so opted for taking a two day surf trip on the neaby west coast. Interacting with the environment rather than just going to see something is usually our preferred style and almost alway more fulfilling and memorable. It was a beautiful morning again in Cambridge though, which gave us no inclination to rush off anywhere.
We took breakfast on the terrace and caught up with a few bits of news and emails from friends before packing up and leaving around lunch time. The waves were making their way in coudroy lines towards the beach as we observed from the cliff tops and a hand glider pilot waved as he silently drifted by.
The waves came in in long lines that looked amazing, but instead of peeling off from a single point, tended to dump over all at once, making it very difficult to ride a clean wave. (And even harder to paddle through them!) We worked as hard as we could, but in the end returned to the beach with less rewards than should have justified our efforts!
We'd already sorted a campsite a few miles from the beach, but decided that it would be much nicer to cook dinner by the sea. We drove down to Manu Bay when local surfers were pouring, in having finished work for the day. This meant that the line up for waves was very crowded and given all the energy we'd already expended, we decided to eat and watch instead of getting in. The upside of this was that we had front row seats watching some amazing surfers while we cooked up a pasta dinner. Some could do 360 spins and ariel manoeuvres and an old guy on a long board lay down while riding the waves and span himself around while riding!
We stayed until dark, before driving the short distance back to the tent.
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