Hygate Motor Lodge Hamilton

... down all the sides of the hillsides. It could have been quite scary if I had slowed down enough to look! We did stop at one point where the Wanganui River was thundering over a vast waterfall below. This is the same sedate river in the sun I'd photographed the day before. Hwy 4 steadily climbed and the car thermometer steadily dropped as we did so. Soon the rain looked suspiciously like sleet. Hmmmm. Then the ice warning symbol on the dash lit up and the sleet ...

... of crossing croc rivers, surfing, and bartering. (so... maybe super arrogant, but ballsy, at least.) Swiss Genius tells us about his studies, how (like the linguistic "critical age") there is a time period when you are young that if you don't do a lot of sports you can never be as good at sports as someone who has, that you need to accumulate about 10,000 hours of practice in order to be a professional, how he has gotten each of his degrees in a different place ...

... notice that there are some people on the porch who look awake so I slip outside. I ask a boy for a drag, and he hands me a TUI along with it. There are cigarettes and beer and laughter in this backpackers after all. We buy some wine and chat. There is a good view of Grampa from the outside, but he never looks back towards us, seeming to not know that he even has a porch that rowdy kids might throw cigarettes off of. Eventually he falls asleep in his recliner ...

... consistent and big swells since Raglan is on the west coast, they get all of the big north westerlies. I have posted a number of pics from our time in Raglan and at Solscape. They are in a photo album attached with some descriptions. We were there for 2 weeks and had an absolute blast. Met some great people, had some cooler weather at the start but then over our last week had heaps of sun! A typical day WOOFing at Solscape We weren't sure what to expect when ...

... Show. When living in Hamilton, O'Brien often frequented the Embassy Theatre, in fact I think he used to cut hair in a barber's shop there. The sculpture won the Creative NZ prize in 2006. The Embassy Theatre was closed in 1989 and demolished in 1994. By the way, over in this part of the world the word 'thongs' refers to flip flops. . This particular meaning had to be explained to me when I looked confused as someone described an ...

... Only mine. I'm sure you're all familiar with the philosophy question: "If a tree falls in a wood and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" I could ask the same of life: "If you live a life that no one is witness to, are you really living?" Why are people so obsessed with marking the passage of time with words, pictures, video. We feel the urge to have a polaroid of every moment, freeze framing the passing seconds in order to have proof that they ever existed. That ...

... was just another form of worship and these people - though a bit intense - were enthusiastic about their religion and it was nice to see the happiness on their faces as they sang instead of misery. "Uhh...Emma....is that boy having a seizure?!" I have seen seizures. He looked like he was seizing. I was one second away from pulling chairs out of this kid's way and calling 111 (New Zealand's 911) until I looked down at him and saw he was laughing. That's when I had to sit down ...

... Lizzy came away the money-winner with a whopping $3,000 (the average was $200). It was also a pot luck dinner so everyone brought round yummy food and I made a very heavy cake. It was a white chocolate-syrup sponge topped with a layer of caramel, then white chocolate mouse then a good inch of white chocolate curls and chopped macademia nuts (boy! how hard are macademia's to crack when you don't have a nut-cracker?!?!) I have photos... will add soon!

... up to the surface I had a huge grin on my face that wiped out all thoughts of how much my shoulders had started hurting. The others in the group were pretty mixed in their abilities - a Scottish guy who had been surfing in Australia a couple of times got pretty good and managed to stand up consistently, others were having real tough times, with a German girl getting stuck and constantly slammed by waves. I felt sorry for her until ...

... it co-inciding with Pancake day (which we actually missed, but made up for and had it on the thursday! ooopppppsss!) and our overindulgent bellies, we made piles of pancakes. And Lauren made her worldfamous brownies (or at least they should be world famous, they're so good!) and the whole hostel drooled as the smell of fresh baking and chocolate filled the kitchen!! Was very sad to leave, and will be trying hard to get back here before I leave N.Z!!