Stick a fork in me because I'm DONE! Officially finished with exams on Wednesday and I think they went pretty well. On Thursday I went with Inger, my friend from Norway, to Raglan, a little surfing community on the West coast near Hamilton. I got massively car sick on the way up to Raglan because the road was so windy and it took a lot longer than previously anticipated. I should know better by now that when they say it's going to take 6 hours to drive, they really mean it. It's not like in the US where 6 hours could be as little as 5:15 or 5:30 because of the speed limit. The roads here are windy as and very narrow. We ended up spending the night in Hamilton on Thursday because it was late and I was feeling awful. The next morning we got up early and left around 8:30 and made it to Hamilton around 9:30. We stopped and had a coffee at the Blacksand cafe and proceeded to head to our hostel for the night.
The hostel we stayed at was called Solscape and was the best one yet! The cabins were made from old train cars that they cut in half and stuck beds in. The whole hostel was powered by solar panels and the toilets and showers used rainwater! There was even a big recycling center behind the kitchen and a compost pile! I was in heaven needless to say. The people there were very friendly and I had a very cool discussion about US politics and culture with an American and British couple. In the afternoon I went surfing on the beach which was awesome! I had a small lesson with a local instructor and then just surfed for 3 hours! I finally have no problems standing up and can work on my turns! After the surf lesson we went back to the hostel and had a meager pasta dinner and went back on the beach to catch an amazing sunset. The beaches on the West coast are quite unique because the sand is very black due to the large amounts of iron in the sand. This has also led to some problems because the government wants to start mining for iron in the sand, which will destroy the ecosystem and make it very bad for the surf. But the black sand was absolutely beautiful in the sunset and it was very quiet, which was perfect. The next day we went on the beach again to collect a little bit of souvenir sand before leaving. We found these 4 limestone Maori carvings near the beach of Tawhirimatea (god of wind/rain), Mahuika (goddess of fire, Tangaroa (god of the sea) and Papatuanaku (mother earth). Each statue was beautifully carved and represented one of the cardinal directions. Afterwords we made our way back to Palmy stopping along the way at Bridal Veil Falls and Lake Taupo for a quick lunch lakeside. Beautiful day and awesome trip! Now I have to pack up my life for the past 5 months and get ready to leave for a month long trip around the South Island!
Also, just got a tattoo of a Maori fish hook on my foot today and it looks awesome!
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