Yo no comprende nada

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

My feeble language skills are progressing slowly but surely. Yesterday I was able to return AA batteries and exchange them for AAA´s. Even without a receipt! I never figured out how to express what a dumbass I was buying the wrong batteries, but eventually I did get my point across, and they kindly let me exchange for what I needed. I also discovered the difference between cocinar and comida. Till now I´d been going into restaurants asking if I could go into the kitchen and help cook up some orders rather than sit down, order and eat. No wonder everyone looks at me like the loco gringo I am.

BBQ under the stars

Last night Italo invited me for a BBQ. Talk about Spanish language immersion. He and Anita don´t speak a word of English so it was a great chance to learn a few more words. It´s always amazed me how people cross the language divide so easily when they want to. I brought some queso and vino tinto and they BBQ´d some really nice locally farmed porc. We sat under the stars, the fire keeping us warm against the chilly southerly wind while Italo and Anita pointed out the southern constellations. Las Tres Maria´s, Cruces de Sol and many more from the brilliant starry night.

Punta de Lobos

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

Sorry not much time to write at the moment. Don´t want to let any more of these lonely waves go to waste.... This is what I woke up to on my first morning. Nobody is really in the water till 10-11am. You know I don´t mind the early. Four of us shared this session for about 3 hours.

Punta de Lobos - Chile

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

I caught the 11am bus in Santiago for Pichilemu so I could enjoy a lazy breakfast at the Happy House. The buses here are great! Modern lazyboy seats with plenty of leg room are a nice contrast to what we had become used to in South East Asia.The bus left the city and wound it´s way through rolling hillsides dried out by the summer heat. I imagine these are the perfect weather conditions for the countless vineyards we passed on our way to the coast to create those great Chilean wines. After only 3 hours we arrived to dusty Pichilemu. Siesta time and pretty quiet. I dragged my gear up the street to la esquina and soon was on a local collectivo for the last 6km´s to Punta de Lobos.

Dropped off in another dusty parking lot I looked around and had no idea where the rumoured campground was. Plenty of expensive looking cabañas dotted the hillside looking out over the point with a black sand beach heaving with a summer crowd. The surf was onshore and small so I wasn´t rushed.

After asking a few people about camping and receiving vague answers and even vaguer directions,( probably only vague due to my lacking any local language skills whatsoever) I eventually met Señor?¿?¿ El Caballero de Churro´s. He and his wife were selling churro´s filled with dulce de leche out of a van on the clifftop. Yes, I´ve had more than one so far. Mmmmm..... We talked for awhile. Actually, he rattled off directions and instructions to me in Spanish while I nodded my head pretending to understand all the while feeling like a complete idiot. I guess I understood enough because soon I met Italo and Anita. After explaining to them that I was an old friend of Señor Churro and was looking for a place to camp near the surf, they generously agreed to let me set up my tent behind their ramshackle shack in a grove of trees. Perfect! Shaded, protected from the wind, inconspicuous, and only 100 yards to the surf!

Breakfast at The Happy House Hostel - Santiago

I love Hostel´s! You meet so many people from all over the world in such homey environment. Sometimes people are a little shy but I always find that a smile and hello relaxes most. Of course this morning I woke up headed down to breakfast. It´s really good here. I said Buenos Dias to everyone, sat down and had some coffee. I thought I´d start a coversation so I asked the French girls next to me what they thought of Sarkozy and Carla Bruni. They looked at me like I was crazy! That´s when I found out the older folks across the table were Italians. Hah! We didn´t take that topic much further....

On the bus to Pichilemu this morning!

Argentine Beef

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

I´m not going to turn this into Emeril´s food freak blog but I´ve got to talk about the food in Argentina and Uruguay. The steak here is truly amazing. You hear all about it but til you get here and slice into a nice thick prime cut with a butter knife you can only dream... The European culinary heritage is still well in place here in the southern countries and thankfully so. Hedda and I have had to force ourselves to only eat steak every other night so our arteries don´t explode. But don´t worry.... The other nights we feast on some of the best fresh pasta´s I´ve ever had. Tonight I had pumpkin filled ravioli´s with a sage butter cream sauce that was amazing. Buenos Aires is lovely. I´d come back just to feast.

New Zealand - Outer Island

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

This wave was unreal. Extremely hollow sand-sucking takeoff into a playful Lowers wall that wound off over the rivermouth sandbar for 100 yards. Some waves were sucking in so much water on the out going tide during the peak of the swell that the wave broke in almost a standstill at the peak. It was really bizarre to see the ocean swell approach the opposing outgoing river current and stall for just a moment before rifling through and across to the bar where it broke unimpeded by the rivers flow. Not many people out here and it was the peak of their season. Cyclones or tropical depressions near Fiji create most of the swell for this paradise. I camped out here for 4 nights and will definitely be back.

Raglan Lines

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

We had to go back to Raglan. After passing through and not catching any swell on the points we made our way up to Auckland to drop off the camper. We spent a few days around the city hanging out with Dave Decker who was traveling through from Oz with his friend Kevin. Way to many beers over a couple of days... We closed down the last bar we hit every night together while catching up on old times.

It was time to get back on the coast. We organized a van for about NZ$35/day from one of the rent-a-wrecks in town and started thinking about where we wanted to head to. There were some small waves and good winds in the forecast for the east coast but the German couple at our hostel was raving about a swell due to hit Raglan in a few days so I thought we'd do some sight seeing on the Coromandel for a couple of nights and then shoot on over to the west coast and catch that swell at Raglan. It ended up working out perfectly. We drove up to Hot Water Beach which is one of the top ten most beautiful beaches in the world. Not much surf and a little crowded for our liking but stunning scenery on the Coromandel all the same. The landscape is mountainous with lush, sub-tropical forests that drop steeply straight down to the ocean with tiny little secluded bays and white sand beaches. We rambled along in our beat-up little Toyota van that couldn't be any different from the Britz camper we'd had a few days before. We ended up down at a DOC campground in the forest a few miles from Whitiroa where I had two days of really fun head-high beachbreaks to myself.

Arriving in Raglan the first afternoon we rolled up to some fun waves coming into Manu Bay. A little windy but still some of the best surf I'd seen in awhile. Long lines of swell unwinding down the point. Dave and Kevin had just finished risking their lives getting into all kinds of action down in Taupo. White water sledging, abseiling into caves and bungying. All kinds of craziness!!! We met up for a beer to hear all about it that night. This time we stayed at the campground in town. It was really great since thats where most of the local Maori families were set up. The people next to us come down to Raglan every summer with their kids and grandkids for 3-4 weeks. Rivermouths are pretty special places for surfers as well as most indigenous people. For surfers it's the pointbreak that has been created over millenia from the flow of water or the sandbars that open up after a good rainfall. For others around the world a rivermouth is a source of fresh water, food resources and arable land. And its pretty.... Think Malibu, Rincon, Mundaka, Trestles, Talebudgera Creek behind Burleigh along with many, many more. Anyway it was really cool to camp for 4 nights with so many local people. Seeing what they brought in from fishing all day, cooking in the kitchen seeing what they were fixing up and learning a few Maori words. No, I can't remember what they mean now... And the swell came as the Germans predicted. Surfed Manu and Indicators really good. Far from epic but for a summer swell I was really stoked.

Ruapuke - North Island

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

Hedda and I spent our last night in the luxurious Britz camper at Solscape in the hills above Raglan. Pretty cool set up there with their abandoned train cars creating a trippy atmosphere. Beautiful crystal clear, offshore morning but no waves on the points. We took the drive around the points on the gravel road. Pretty slow and winding but with amazing views of the Tasman Sea. I did pull over at one point and spotted a nice looking left point at the bottom of a long steep valley, most likely only accessible by boat.

Just when we thought we'd past the road to the beach we found it. Black, black sand and a small Mako shark in the parking area obviously left by some locals to remind visitors where they are. The surf was offshore, head-high and pretty punchy. A few little barrels were there to be had. Unfortunately for those lonely waves I was surfing this long stretch of beachbreak and only saw 4 others all morning.

Cobden - West Coast - South Island

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

I didn't have much luck on the West Coast this trip. The winds are really tough on this side with the typical SW flow obviously creating stiff onshores for most spots. Looked at some amazing coastline along the road north and can imagine that with the right conditions there'd be many waves going off. I'd love to surf one of the rivermouths below the Glaciers and the sub-tropical rainforest that covers this section of the island. Next time....

I did end up surfing Cobden near Greymouth. The north side of the river has some brown water and some decent peaks somewhat like a Newport jetty wave. On the positive side, it was protected from the wind and the water was about 10 degrees warmer than the East Coast. Had a fun surf with a guy from Wales, (he seemed to think it was great), and a couple other locals recovering from their Christmas fun.

Big Bay Hut

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

Woke up early to bluebird skies and a light offshore breeze. I ran out through the flax down to the beach for my first clear view of the bay. It's absolutely huge. The beach is literally over 3 miles long between the two rivermouths. The south side of the bay stretches about 8 miles out from the beach and the north about 6. I quickly made up my porridge breakfast and coffee, packed up my gear for the day and headed through the forest to the swing bridge to cross the river. The path through was a muddy bog after the past two days of rain. I was shin deep in mud 20 feet up from the river! Another barely marked deer trail to get back to the beach where I had to cross a waist deep river anyways. It took me about an hour to go 2 km's. I still had about 5-6 km's to go....

I kept up a steady pace jumping from rock to rock, but soon saw the wind starting to come up from the west making my chances for a surf slim. I made it to Crayfish Rock and had a good look at the best wave in the bay. A great looking right point breaking mechanically over large boulders. Unfortunately, the wind had kicked in and was blowing out the head-high waves. Pretty difficult to be on it here when the wind can change direction 4 times in 20 minutes and the hut is a 2 1/2 hour walk from the break. Should've brought a tent.... I decided to have a little lunch and go fishing. It was a beautiful sunny day and somebody must have felt sorry about the waves being blown out so I actually caught not just one but two fish. I'm calling em blue cod but truth be told I'm not really sure what they were. I had to throw them back anyways cause they were definitely on the small side.

After another 1 1/2 hours tramping back along the north side of the bay I reached the rivermouth. The mouth itself was looking mighty ferocious so I walked up the river for a bit and found what looked to be a good spot to cross. I put my camera in my waterproof bag, stripped down to my speedos and started wading across. The glacial runoff was pretty chilly but luckily it was only waist deep keeping my backpack out of the water. The river was about 40 yards across at this point so I was able to make it across pretty quickly. I jogged up the beach to warm back up and then thought I'd better change back into some pants before heading back to the hut just in case someone had shown up. It had been 3 days since I'd seen another person. Talk about solitude... Luckily I had changed clothes because Philip from Germany had arrived. Really nice guy, crazy enough to attempt the Pyke River Route on his own. I've heard you sometimes have waist to chest deep river crossings when it's been dry. I can't imagine how Philip will find it on his own. I gave him an extra gas canister for his stove in case he had to wait for the water levels to drop somewhere. It was nice to have a little company that night.

Big Bay Hut

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

Woke up to pouring rain. The rain had been relentless for over 36 hours. The good thing about the rain is that it keeps the sandflies down. Sandflies are nasty, noiseless bloodsuckers who relentlessly attack any tiny bit of bare skin till they've left it covered in welts and have driven their victim halfway to insanity. If you don't normally cuss, spend ten minutes with a handful of sandflies and you will. Little F@#%ers!!!!

OK, back to Big Bay.... I slept in and recovered from the previous days hike in. Around lunchtime the rain stopped so I walked out to the beach and up to the rivermouth. About halfway there a giant circle opened up in the clouds above me showing beautiful blue skies for about 20 minutes. It soon closed up and started to pour rain again. It rained heavily through the afternoon, finally clearing around 9pm. Just in time to show off an incredible sunset.

Martin's Bay to Big Bay

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

I left Martin's Bay Hut after a breakfast of porridge and coffee. Said my goodbye's to the Kiwi fishermen and started down the track in a light drizzle. The track to Long Reef is good but as soon as you start heading east into Big Bay it changes dramatically. At times there is no path and you have to push through the bush keeping an eye out for tiny orange triangles or buoy's people have tied to trees which mark the route. It got pretty stressful at times. It started to rain pretty heavily and I was climbing into and out of steep ravines, stepping into knee deep mud, all the time trying to keep an eye out for those damn triangles so I wouldn't wander off the route.

After a couple of hours of this I made it down to the beach which felt great. It wasn't a flat sandy beach though. It was a scramble over rocks, reefs,cobblestones and shells. I saw more abalone shells littering the beach than I've ever seen in my life! There was no shelter from the rain so I pushed on to Mackenzie Creek. I tried following the trail to the river crossing on the DOC map which was a mistake. I followed the trail till it disappeared into flax bush behind an estuary when my instinct had told me to stay on the beach. I ended up stumbling along deer trails for an extra half hour which zigzagged all over the place. Sometimes I was knee deep in mud, other times I had to crawl through the bush making sure my board wasn't getting dinged up... I finally thought I saw a clearing and made my way towards it only to find out I was on the edge of a creek with no bank to walk on. I was getting pretty fed up at this point and soaked to the bone by the rain, so I jumped into the waist deep freezing water, held my board on the surface to keep steady and waded about 50 yards downstream to the beach I could've walked right up if I'd listened to my instincts! Mackenzie Creek was nothing after that. I was feeling pretty cold so, now that I was finally on relatively flat ground I picked up the pace as best as I could against the northerly wind for the final 3 miles up the beach to Big Bay Hut.

Noticing a couple of buoy's tied to some sticks back from the beach I followed them over the sand dunes, through a forest of flax and finally found the hut a few hundred yards back from the ocean. It felt really good to make a fire, get dry, and change clothes. Pretty exciting day of tramping. I now know the difference in New Zealand between a track, (a well maintained walking trail) and a route, (general directions with next to zero maintenance, an overgrown deer track). The last time any work was done to clear the route to Big Bay was over five years ago.

Martin's Bay

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

I somehow managed to get a ticket on a backload flight from Te Anau in to Martin's Bay Lodge. Only cost me $125 rather than the $1,000 if I'd chartered it myself!! I kissed Hedda goodbye on the grassy runway, strapped my board down the middle between the six seats and then we took off over Lake Te Anau. The Pilot kept us at a low altitude to try and avoid the worst of the turbulent weather. A mix of dark clouds and blue sky hovered over the mountains. We followed the road to Milford up the Eglington Valley. The pilot pointed out some areas of the river that are being overtaken by Didymo, an invasive algae someone introduced to New Zealand about 4 years ago. It is devastating to be seen from above, Once crystal clear waters are infected with brown colored algae that looks like dirty toilet paper.

We soon crossed the Divide and were on the West Coast side of the mountains, heading up the Hollyford Valley. Stunning snow capped peaks rise straight up on both sides of Lake Mackerrow. The lake is about 15 miles long stretching towards the Tasman sea. Dolphins actually swim up the lake and work together as a team to herd trout for a special feast at the head of the lake. The pilot flew us straight out over the sea at Martin's Bay which was whipped up from strong northerly winds and circled back to the landing strip. I tried to keep my salami and cheese sandwich lunch down. Although the grassy landing strip didn't look very long, he landed smoothly and rolled to a stop using up only about half of its entire length. I later found out that this bush pilot, Shaun, once circled above Martin's Bay on a socked in cloudy day for over half an hour before diving straight down through a hole that opened up in the clouds, rushed his passengers onboard and then shot straight back up before that same hole could close back up.

After unloading my gear and getting ready for the sandflies I hiked the 2 hours to the hut at the mouth of Martin's Bay. No one there so I grabbed a sandwich and headed up the track to Long Reef. There's a seal colony there with a population of a few hundred. It's actually one of New Zealands largest. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon so I spent it lazing on the rocks giving the seals plenty of space. Later on I poked around in some great tide pools. The rivermouth looks to have some potential with a shallow sandbar built up in the mouth. Unfortunately, the waves were pretty small. Back at the hut that night I ended up meeting a couple of local guys who went out on the reef for a few hours and came back with half a dozen Paua (NZ Abalone), more mussels than we could eat and a few fish. Lucky for me they shared their catch that night along with some great stories of life on the South Island.

Catlin's - South Island - New Zealand

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

Woke up to onshores at the little bay we'd camped at. Hedda and I stayed in the tent until the sun nearly had us sweating. Getting up and having a look at the surf I could see that the swell had dropped a bit and the wind was coming straight into the bay from the north. A neighbor of ours camping mentioned there might be a wave around the corner working and would we like to follow him around to see if it was? Kiwi hospitality at it's finest. We drove off down the dirt track, up and over a few hills, through a couple of gates entering a farmer's property, and finally through a couple of sheep fields to find a left firing down a point. Great waves all day!

A Bay somewhere in the Catlin's

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

I heard about this spot from a guy up the coast in Oamaru. In New Zealand the locals are so incredibly cool. You occasionally read in the news about stories of locals beating people up for surfing "their spot" or stink eye's. They've never heard about it in NZ. I guess they've got so many waves and so few people they don't need to worry about crowds. This little bay had great little barrels in an amazing setting. There is no way I would've found the dirt track that leads to it if I hadn't been told about it from that guy. We camped here for a few days on a grassy paddock overlooking a creek that fed the sandbanks.

Best Fush and Chups Ever!!!

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

The lady that filled our gas tank sent us over to this takeaway that had the finest fish and chips in NZ. Award winning with a certificate from Crisco to prove it. Tasty lunch for Hedda and I!

Dunedin - South Island, New Zealand

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

Paddling out for my first surf here, I saw yellow eared penguins walking between their burrows on the hillside and out to the surf. It was pretty cool to see these guys in the wild. In Oamaru, Hedda and I had stood in the rain for almost an hour, looking down a 100 foot cliff with 20 other tourists just trying to catch a glimpse of the same penguins. I was virtually alone with them just a few feet away, watching them waddle into the surf next to me. Here I was, just another silly looking creature dressed in black, flopping around in the surf.

Once outside waiting for the next set, I saw a fur seal come flying down the line on the wave of the afternoon. I was ducking under the lip with him just a few feet away riding the wave. Fun. Kind of... After the wave finished he poked his head out of the water about ten feet away to announce his presence. He stared me down pretty good to let me know who was boss out here. I asked one of the local guys who was out if he was a regular and he told me yeah, the seal name is Jerry. Hi Jerry, nice to meet ya. The wild life here is amazing.

Summer in New Zealand

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

It's summer in the southern hemisphere, but you wouldn't know it in Dunedin. Listed below are a few of the item's I've had to pick up here.

2 pairs of wool socks
Long sleeve flannel shirt
Thermal underwear - bottoms and tops
Mitts
Short sleeve .5mm neoprene shirt to wear under my fullsuit - I'm still freezing out there!

We've been staying in a campground, (hot showers) and playing with penguins and fur seals. Surf has been pretty good on a couple of days.

South Island - New Zealand

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

We picked up a little Subaru station wagon in Methven and hit the coast as soon as we could. Banks peninsula was our first stop. We based ourselves in the little harbor town of Akaroa for a few days eating fish and chips and enjoying the amazing views of the bays that circle the peninsula. The photo here is of one of the 12 bays that circle the peninsula picking up different swell angles and work in different winds. This place seemed to like the combination this day.