Having checked out the surfing and New Plymouth in general, and, having slept in the car the night before, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dip at the Taranaki Mineral Baths. Very Alkaline, very hot and very relaxing, we spent a half hour working the kinks incurred from our previous night's makeshift camp. A warm shower after that and we were ready to hit the road.
The drive from New Plymouth to Raglan was largely uneventful, punctuated only once by a stop in Pio Pio for some of the best soft ice cream and frozen yogurt I'd ever had. Not sure if this is the norm in New Zealand / elsewhere, but the machine they had was fascinating. Basically it was a giant funnel where you put vanilla ice cream and frozen berries (The shop was part of a blueberry, rasberry and strawberry farm). Then, what can only really be described as a conical drill bit, sized to fit perfectly into the funnel was lowered into the machine and turned on. Obviously very high torque, it ground the berries into the ice cream and extruded it out the bottom into the waiting cone. It was my first time seeing such a device and the results were delicious.
Now I'd booked our stay in Raglan at a Campsite / Eco Retreat called Solscape. The main appeal was that they'd made their cabins out of what they called "cabooses" and the photos and views made it look quite nice. When we got there, we quickly realized that the "Eco" part of the retreat was what their main focus was. Not a bad thing, just not what we expected. We checked into our cabin / caboose: in reality it was an older 30s-40s style train car that had been cut in two and closed up with a proper wall. Great idea, well executed.
However, I'd accidentally booked us a cabin in the middle of the campsite, which turned out to be quite close to the common areas and the outdoor bbq. We went into town for some dinner and then settled in for the night. It was at this point that the fact that this was also a Youth Hostel became abundantly apparent. The partying started around 9 and didn't stop for quite some time. I had earplugs (thank god) so I ended up passing out fairly quickly.
This is where i'd usually list out the things I didn't like about the place. I'm not going to bother. It wasn't for us, but I can definitely see the appeal for many people so I'll leave it at that and move on with our weekend.
Waking up bright and early, we had some breakfast and headed out to the river mouth to check on the wind. Forecast was to get 13-15knots from the West, perfect for Raglan. The reason Raglan is such a kitesurfing destination is that it has a very strong current in the outgoing tide. This compensates for the lighter winds and makes for marble smooth water on which to kite.
Unfortunately, the wind didn't read the forecast and decided to move SW instead and becalmed the river mouth. I bumped into a traveling Kitesurfing instructor there that I'd first met in Wellington and he and some other tourists chatted up one of the locals to find out where to go. With the info at hand, we all headed out to Aotea. It shares many of the same characteristics as Raglan, though it's harder to get to and doesn't have as friendly a launch spot.
The blue route is the one we took. It was an hour of gravel roads and windy passages through the hillsides and farm country. Yet again I thanked the excellent engineers at Subaru for building such a fantastic AWD system into our Legacy.
Once we got there however, it was worth it. A nice wind was blowing through the river mouth, perfect direction and to top it off we met some really nice kite surfers from Auckland who were down for the weekend. They'd kited this spot previously and had all the local knowledge needed. So off we went hiking down the waterline to a decent launch spot. In the end there was 5-6 of us out on the water.
The red kite on the left is me. The wind was dropping a bit so I decided to rig up a larger kite. I was obviously a little excited and rushed the setup and didn't notice a small hole in the canopy of my kite. Launched the kite, got back out into the water and things were going great until I got to the other side of the estuary, where one of the other kiters noticed that was the hole getting bigger. I managed to get back to the launch area (which was about a km from the other side where we'd been riding) and after a rather graceless landing saw the extent of the damage:
I think it was about this point that the wind took pity on me and picked up another 3 or 4 knots which allowed me to go back out on my smaller kite and finish the day in style.
The tide was coming back in, the sun was setting and I'd had a great day of kiting in conditions I'd never seen in Wellington
To be continued yet again....
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