North Island Day 2: Catching Up With An Old(ish) Mate

We woke up in one piece having not been hacked to death in our sleep by marauding psychopaths, got our shit together and headed up to the town of Coromandel just to say we'd been there before driving back down to Whangamata where my mate, Alex, who I know from Wellington lives with his missus. He chops dead people up by profession but there isn't much call for that sort of work in Whangamata so he's currently assistant manager at the local New World which probably involves dealing with people with slack jaws and vacant stares (and that's just the staff) so he shouldn't feel like he's strayed too far from his profession. He's just not allowed to go at the customers with knives though which must be frustrating, I know, I worked at The Warehouse.

Something Alex seems to talk about alot are JAFAs which is Just Another Fucking Aucklander. They don't seem to like AUckland much in the rest of New Zealand, especially not in Wellington but y'know what? It made me realise how much I do actually love the place. I mean I love travelling round and seeing new places and I love camping out in the middle of nowhere and I love beautiful places in the countryside an all that but I realised that Auckland feels like home. I also realised that I was really going to miss it.

After catching up for a cuppa, we are all English after all, we headed to the wharf for some fishing where Alex managed to lose his $200 sunglasses. It might not have been so bad if we'd caught anything other than leaves but we left the wharf and tried our hand at kayaking and near drowning instead.

Alex And Me

Here's the thing about kayaking, I've done it a million times but I don't recall having to get past surf on a surf beach before. This time we did. Alex cleared the waves and left me and Andrea on the shore, we paddled our little hearts out and managed to get over most of the waves until one came right at us while we were side on and rolled us into the water. We weren't gonna be defeated though, we got back on and got through the waves to where the water was calmer and paddled ourselves out to one of the islands just off shore.

Me And Andi Looking Every Inch The Kayaking Professionals

Getting back was gonna be easy, the pros we were. We paddled ourselves back to shore, through the waves, aiming for the beach at a 45 degree angles just like Alex had told us. He sailed past us just as another wave took a disliking to the tourists and deposited me and Andi back in the water. We managed to hold onto the paddles but not Andrea's $200 sunnies, she managed to lose them an all, seems there's a direct corrolation between the price of sunglasses and how likely you are to lose or break them. I managed to keep hold of my $40 pair from the servo. Shame about my dignity.

Alex's missus, Claire, has a siamese cat that had kittens a few months ago so there were four kittens plus mum. God they're cute! And expensive, the kittens are like $500 each which is a bit steep for a tiny little weapon of mass destruction if u ask me. I love kittens though, these ones tear around the house, fight and play with each other before curling up together in a big pile of Cute.

And The Award For The Cutest Thing Ever Goes To...

Covered In $2000 Worth Of Pussy

After a meal and a game of pool at the local RSA we just chilled at Alex's with a few beers while I got covered in pussy.

Sounds like a damn fine night in to me.

written by

Koala Bear on January 14, 2009 from Whangamata, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip

tagged RoadTrip, LovinIt and NorthIsland

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