New Zealand Honeymoon, Part 2: Surfing in the Northland

Waiting Surfboards

Pretending to be recovered from our trip halfway across the world, Katie and I woke up after our first night in New Zealand ready to go surfing! We signed up for a five day surf trip with New Zealand Surf’N’Snow Tours based out of Ahipara. We met up in the morning at the Waitemata (Auckland) harbor with our guide and the rest of the group. The group consisted of a couple from Utah, also on their honeymoon, and a selection of girls from Minnesota, Canada, England, and Sweden. Our guide Rangi was quite pleased with the male/female ratio, perhaps more so as the two guys were both on honeymoons…

Drunken Canadian Girls

After quite a drive up into the Northland we arrived at the surf house. The house reminded us of an off-campus college house with ancient couches and a pool/ping pong table; the primary difference was that the sliding door opened directly to the beach. We lost out by two days on booking the room with a double bed; single beds in a private room would have to suffice. In any case a private room was better than sharing the bunks in the back with the drunken Canadians. Shortly after unloaded everyone headed down to the beach for some instruction and a surf. Katie was excited to wear her new neoprene booties and was a bit slow… The guides offered about thirty minutes of guidance in the sand and assured us that we would not end up “beached as bro”, whatever that happens to mean. And then off into the water!

Riding the Massive Whitewater

This was the only real bit of on land instruction that we received; perhaps as the waves remained tiny the entire week it was not deemed necessary to further work on the beach. That is not to say we were left on our own; the guides would offer bits of advice as we failed on more and more waves. The first afternoon I focused on standing up in the whitewater; Katie was a bit more advanced from her surfing experiences in New Jersey. On the second day I learned to get up before the wave broke; unfortunately it was not until the third day that I learned this did not mean the instant before the wave broke. It certainly was a lot more fun not just getting slammed down! Now that I could constantly get up, it was a lot more fun; of course staying up for more than a few seconds was a bit of a challenge.

Shipwreck Bay

Finally on the last morning surf the waves started to get bigger, up to a bit more than 1.5 meters. I rode a few and then got on a pretty good one. I was cruising down the wave when I suddenly heard the roar of the barrel directly behind me. Instead of leaning my weight forward to speed up like I was taught, I looked back just in time to see the wave smash me down on my board. With a few bruised ribs I paddled back to shore to close out my surfing adventure for the trip. Katie likewise had a rough last day with her board smashing down on her head a few times.

Of course there was more to do in the Northland than just surf. Or perhaps because no one was strong enough to surf all day that we did a variety of other activities. We went up to Shipwreck Bay (apparently there is great surfing though the water was perfectly flat when we visited) and did some sand boarding down the dunes. Falling off the board resulted in sand going everywhere (I think I was still finding sand when we got down to Rotorua) as you can see by my picture. We found some mussels in the tidal pools and had a huge mussel bake later that night.

Sunset from Ahipara Beach

The couple from Utah were big into Yoga and led a few classes on the beach that Katie really enjoyed. And being a honeymoon, Katie and I took a lot of walks down the beach at sunset. Supposedly there was a penguin by us on one of the walks; we are still uncertain if the guide was just messing with us. After our five days had expired, we headed back to Auckland for the next part of our adventure!

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