The Chronicles of NZ: Road Trip (Written 1/2/07)

After spending almost a week in Auckland, it was time to move on and start exploring the rest of this island. This morning Josh and Kevin went to pick up the rental car and then picked me up at Carol's house. We didn't get on the road until about 12pm, so good thing we still had 9 hours of sunlight left. So we started our great road trip by getting on Motorway 1 and just heading south.

Our first major stop on the trip was to find a car adapter so that the mp3 players could be used. So we found this strip mall area that had a place called 'The Warehouse' in it. After searching for so long, I had finally found the Walmart of NZ! This place had almost everything at reasonably low prices – it was an awesome feeling. Now to find the Best Buy of NZ! As I was shopping in 'The Warehouse' I was also looking for a fleece jacket to keep me warm – but all they were selling were shorts and short sleeve shirts because it's "summer". It's the 65 degrees here with a high windshield factor – reality does not match the clothes they are trying to sell! After doing a bit of shopping at the other stores (I found a fleece jacket at one of the other stores) we headed for the town of Raglan to see a waterfall there that Kevin told us about.

The name of the waterfall was Brided Veil Falls and it was a pretty nice waterfall. It was definitely as big as some of the waterfalls in Samoa. We took pictures at the top and bottom of the fall. After the falls, we headed more towards the town of Raglan, which is on the western side of NZ. According to Kevin, this area had some of the best surf spots in NZ – specifically Manu Bay and Whale Bay. We checked out the two bay areas and this was my first chance to checkout a real NZ beach.

First of all, it was really cold at the beach and people were in their swimming gear – just blew my mind. The next thing I noticed was the great views around the beach, you could see luscious rolling green mountains on both sides. As for the beach itself – it was massive; it looked like it could hold 1,000 people with a ton of room to spare. I've never seen such a large beach before. After seeing the bays and beach, we decided that we would spend the night in Raglan – so we pulled up to a hostel and reserved a room.

This was my first time back in a hostel since we came to NZ – and this was a true hostel whereas the one in Auckland felt like a mini-hotel. I've met some folks from the states as well as Holland and Germany at this hostel (Kairoi Lodge), so this has definitely been an eye opening experience. I may never stay in a hostel, again after I'm done with PC, so I have to fit in as much hostelling (and the unique adventures that go with it) as possible. Tomorrow – we head for Waitomo!

 *Side Notes*

- How did the Brided Veil Falls get its name? Because someone thought it looked like a bride's veil. Simple, eh?

- Anything special about Raglan? Raglan was named after 'Lord Raglan' after it was used as a base during the Land Wars. This place also has a huge reputation for surfing and was featured in the classic surf film 'The Endless Summer'.