Hamilton and Raglan

  Raglan, New Zealand
Wednesday, January 10, 2007

With a week of rain predicted, we left the Tongariro area, and drove towards Hamilton, with a stop in Otarahanga which has several "kiwiana" displays - basically shopfronts have dedicated some window space to some historical information on something kiwi - such as Marmite, (supposed) Kiwi ingenuity, etc. It was mildly interesting. In Hamilton we settled into a campground to sit out the rain. But after a night of rest, we woke up to more rain. We spent the day in Hamilton, where we walked around the downtown for a bit. First stop was at a statue of Riff Raff. It's actually a statue of Richard O'Brien, the creator of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. English born O'Brien only spent his teens and early twenties in New Zealand, but (so it is claimed), it was his watching sci-fi B-movie Double Features at the Embassy Theatre in Hamilton that laid the foundation for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He apparently worked in a barber shop in the theatre. The statue is on the site of the former Embassy Theatre. He's dressed as Riff Raff, which is the role he played in the movie. For all you Rocky Horror fans out there, you'll appreciate this information. Then we cruised a few shops, before heading to the other side of the Waikato River for the Hamilton Gardens. Featured was the Paradise Gardens Collection, a series of gardens themed on different styles from around the world. We saw a really beautiful Italian Renaissance Garden, as well as an interesting Indian Char Bagh Garden. The Chinese Scholar Gardens was great, with a bamboo alley, a corridor of eternal fragrance (like a thatched enclosed corridor), a pagoda, etc. There was a great Japanese Zen Rock Garden - bigger than the one Kirsten gave us! And a less interesting but still nice, English Country garden and American Modernist garden. Finished with Hamilton we headed towards Raglan seeking sun and surf. The day dawned in Raglan with lots of sun, but with a dreaded east breeze. The neighbours say that if the breeze is from the east the sea goes flat, which isn't so good for the surfing. However, we were picked up around 9am for our lesson and the driver said there were nice waves for learning. So we headed to the surf school where we spent a little bit of time practicing techniques on dry land. We learned how to paddle and the four step method to standing up, as well as where to stand on the board, and so on. Hit the beach around 10:30am, got our suits and boards, and went to the water. The boards are soft spongy material on top, not fully fiberglass, so you won't hurt yourself learning. We spent about 2 hours in the water - the time went incredibly fast! We can totally see getting addicted to this sport. We both stood up several times, and stayed up to coast into the beach a few times. It's a lot harder to stay up than to get up. The water was so nice and warm. It's the first time we've been in the water in this country that it hasn't been freezing!! It was a great sunny morning, and the waves were awesome. I think even for experienced surfers there was an adequate amount of surf, and for learning it was great. Something interesting was the sand, it's black sand and as we walked back to the trailer with our surfboards it seemed that our feet would burn right off. It was the HOTTEST sand ever. Apparently there is a lot of iron content in it (people want to mine the seabed and extract the iron, which of course is not what most locals want, as it will likely wreck the surf breaks, not to mention the environment in general). Presumably the iron content made it hotter, like walking on a cast iron woodstove or something. After changing we headed into town where we ate some pizza at Costas Italian restaurant. While there we saw a white and blue campervan drive by with HECTOR written on the side of it!! Rod raced to the sidewalk to see where it headed, but it was on the highway back towards Hamilton. We kept our eyes peeled the rest of the day, but no other sightings. My guess is that it's those friends of Kirsten's friend Brendan, or whoever bought their van after them if they're gone! We wanted to stay in Raglan another couple of days, and spend some more time surfing, just renting a board and wetsuit. However, we stayed two more nights, and woke each day to RAIN and CLOUD. So after 3 days, we headed out of Raglan, more surfing will have to wait until another time.