Lemon Water & Surf...

Trip Start Jun 11, 2008
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Trip End May 14, 2009


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Flag of New Zealand  , North Island,
Wednesday, October 15, 2008

On the move again this morning, heading for Raglan. On the way we stopped off at Paeroa, which is apparently famous for it's lemon flavoured mineral water.....apparently......dunno where it's famous.......probably just in Paeroa!!
Anyway, our bus driver, Natalie, nipped over to the shop to buy a couple of bottles for us to try. It does just taste like lemonade, although Lorna thought it tasted like lockets for some reason!! We were even sad enough to pose next to a giant replica bottle of the stuff!! So touristy!! It was very sad!

Next stop was at Hamilton. We went by both the cricket and rugby grounds and also drove along the car racing track!! This town is really weird. It's like an old Western style cowboy town. It's even got a saloon! I can just imagine the floor being covered in sawdust and a spittoon at the side of the bar! You can tell they are a bit backward here though because the saloon was called the "Lion Red"!! I think you've got that the wrong way round folks! Continue with the inbreeding you nice people.

Hamilton is one of those towns that reminded me of Back to the Future - we had to get up to a certain speed to actually leave this blip in the universe! I am pleased to say that we must have found that "sweet spot" and got out of Hamilton in one piece!

We then arrived in Raglan. This is a major surfing town in New Zealand. It apparently has the one of the best left hand surf breaks in the World - that's surfing lingo - I have no idea what they're talking about!! It's a really good beach here with lots of decent waves for the surfing dudes. We have decided we are going to learn to surf in Australia so we will give it a miss here.

Our digs tonight were at Karioi Lodge. We had a four bed dorm this time and shared it with a couple of Germans. This lodge has got a fantastic common room with flat screen tv, satellite channels, free pool table, darts, table football and big comfy sofas. It also had videos and books to borrow. Very good.

They have also got a zip-slide here which we had some fun with in the afternoon. We also came back after dark looking for glow worms and did the zip-sliding again in the pitch black! Not the cleverest thing to do, but dead funny as you couldn't see the end of the slide until you hit it!!

For dinner this evening we went down to a local chippie for fish & chips - spot on. They were grand. In the evening a few of us had a couple of beers, played pool and watched a movie - very chilled.
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