Better Late Than Never Pt.I

Finally. We know it's been a while, but we've been making some serious memories. Now it's time to share. Accordingly, we appreciate your patience; things have been awesome down in NZ. When we left off with our story, we were still on the road heading out on a short tramp to the Welcome Flats. Now we have been in Dunedin for nearly 3 weeks now and there is quite a lot to catch all of you up on! We're going to try and start where we left off...and cover all of the good stuff.

So after our excursion on the West Coast we headed over on the 73 and stopped an evening in Arthurs Pass...beautiful location halfway between Greymouth and Christchurch. In Arthurs Pass we did a nice day hike to the summit of Avalanche Peak and quickly headed towards Castle Hill for a couple of days of great bouldering. Caste Hill...WHAT A SPOT! We had two full days of great bouldering on some really interesting limestone features. Think big blobs of limestone with really awkwardly placed pockets and indentations. We made friends with some guys from the UK there who let us borrow their pad and had ourselves an epic time.

After Castle Hill we booked it up to Kaikoura, a town 2 hours north of Christchurch on the Pacific Coast. We got into Kaikoura right around evening time and immediately drove to the nearest Irish Pub for some much needed dinner, a pool game, and some beverages. The "Strawberry Tree" had a whitefish platter that we had to sample. After dinner and a hearty number of pints, we heard the band was looking for musicians. If you know David and I, this was a beckoning we were obliged to take...playing music, live, for the first time in a long time was a ridiculous opportunity. So we sat in with the band until about 1:30 am or so, playing plenty of classic songs and making best friends with just about everyone in the pub..what a night. Somewhere a long the way that evening we made friends with a couple of american girls and their british boyfriends and were offered a place to stay for the evening. We went to their place that night, played a bit more music...until we were told to "pipe down" by one of the american girls who had work and all crashed on the living room floor. This little spot turned out to be our home for the next few nights. We spent 3 nights in Kaikoura...spending most of our time surfing, playing music, and surfing some more...and maybe playing a little more music after that. EPIC. We loved Kaikoura and already miss our friends there. One story that we have to tell you is how we made dinner one of our nights there. We went to a beach called Kahatura to check the surf and decided to make an oven out of stones and cook pizzas in it. While half of the blokes surfed (David, Brandon) the other half including Tom Cromwell (longwhiteclouds.co.uk) built the oven. Pretty simple; stack round stones around about a half by full meter long flat cooking rock, build a big fire, get the embers strong, push it to the back in throw in your 'za and close it off. Andy built a pizza paddle from dried seaweed to top it off. Only problem was the tide! Came up quick, and cut the pizzas a bit short...had to go back to the flats to finish them off in the oven.

The next day, we had a day at the beach. Surfed a break called Meatworks..it was working pretty well and everyone caught some fun ones. That night we had a big cook off, potluck sorta thing, and had a dinner party sorta thing as well with all of our temporary roommates. While partying...we decided we were going for a dawn patrol the next day and we all woke up at 6:00am to go check the surf...turns out it wasn't even that good, but David paddled out anyway. The rest watched a low tide that was not so keen and a bit chilly.

After saying our goodbyes, we headed down towards Christchurch. A straight B line to watch "Da Super Bowl." Ditka, Ditka. Good match, eh? Stoked on the Saints victory over the dreaded Colts. Yes, we all rep. the NOS down yonder, and so did all the Kiwis that were at the pub. After the game, we headed straight back home to Dunedin.

Pt. II will be all about the concluding thoughts on our trip and our time in Dunedin so far...