Our next stop in our north island journey was probably the coolest place we have been yet. The town is called Reglan and i can describe this town in one sentence...ready??? The New Zealand government pays the inhabitants of the town to surf. Imagine a town full of hippies and surfer dudes that are reimbursed from the government for doing nothing more than relaxing all day and catching waves!!! Some people have life figured out eh?
So i believe the saying goes...when in Rome...do as the Romans?!? Surfing it is then! I honestly never thought that i would take surfing lessons in my life, but i couldn't see a better time than the present to pretend to be Patrick Swayze in Point Break. Unfortunately, it turns out that i am not in fact Patrick Swayze and surfing is much harder that it looks on TV. Instead of “Hanging 10” I think we would be lucky if collectively we hung 2.5!!! I do have some funny pictures of Joe and gina tearing up the concrete surf during our training session. I can assure you that as ridiculous as they look in the picture, they look 9999 times worse in real life! I would say that the victor of the day again goes to Gina. She was able to stand up and “surf” pretty consistently by the end of the day...unfortunately the same cannot be said for her life partner, Joe “crash and burn” Mayo.
Another really cool thing about this town was our hostel. It was exactly as you would picture a hippie hostel in the middle of a surf town and filled with surfers. It was set up in a mountain completely surrounded by rainforest. All of the buildings have been painted in “hippiesque” murals and mosaics and all of the pathways were lined with Christmas lights and disco balls. They also had what they called a “flying fox,” which is basically a zip line that you stand on. This provided us with HOURS of entertainment, and given the fact that you were standing up while zipping along at 30 miles per hour, this was probably more dangerous than most of our activities to date. The receptionist tried to convince us that we should get should get some drinks under our belt and give it a whirl after dark. Being of sane mind we resorted to just watching the Canadians do it instead ;).
