We drove from Waitomo north to Raglan along quite a scenic route, taking in a couple of sights along the way. The Mangapohue natural bridge was a few minutes walk along a gorge; apparently it used to be a massive cave which eroded and then collapsed, leaving only a small part of the roof in place which now forms the 'bridge'.

Having seen a few, not overly impressive, waterfalls in NZ we nearly didn't bother stopping at the Marokopa Falls. We were glad that we did, however, because they were by far the best we have seen here. Although only a small fraction of somewhere like Niagara, they did at least have a decent volume of water going over the fall.

We have to report that our map let us down a little. The Raglan road was depicted as having a section of about 10km of gravel, but in the end it was 25km and we were glad to get off it, especially after seeing a couple of guys with a puncture.

As we descended into the coastal town of Raglan we were both reminded of Wanaka, but on a smaller scale. The streets were well kept, lined with palm trees and populated by craft shops, there were hills in the background and water lapped at the shore. A classy little place which should attract a classy clientele, we thought.

Ok, anybody can make a mistake.

We drove through the town to our camp, Solscape. This is advertised as an eco-friendly site where waste is kept to an absolute minimum and natural materials are used as much as possible. The site was on a hill and we had a great view of a bay with white waves breaking on the beach, many of the cabins were made out of old railway carriages, and our spot was next to a field with a few cows and a goat. Rabbits scampered around our van much to Katy's delight. She nicknamed them Flopsy (because of its long, floppy ears) and Cottontail (for its traditional white tail) but they never came close enough to pet or feed.

It was all very nice indeed.

Or it would have been if it wasn't for the people staying there.

Remember what I wrote about waves breaking onto a beach? Raglan is apparently famous for its surfing, though we hadn't realised that before we arrived. Therefore most people who go there are - not surprisingly - young, backpacking surfer dudes. Now I could be wrong - perhaps we just came across a bad bunch. Or maybe it's not just surfers, but backpackers in general. But the surfers staying at Solscape were the most scummy, ignorant set of people we have seen in a long, long time.

It wasn't as if they ran riot, playing music to all hours or holding wild, drunken parties. (That would have been ok - assuming they had invited us.) They weren't foul-mouthed or abusive. Quite a few of them were Americans and therefore could speak only at a volume directly inverse to the intelligence and relevance of what they were saying. This meant a constant cacophony of absolute b******s. But we could have put up with that.

No, what drove us mad was their absolutely scummy kitchen habits.

We've been in more than 70 camps around New Zealand and none of them have even approached Solscape for the state of the main kitchen. The Scummy Surfers as they quickly became known, were incapable of cooking anything without spreading food debris all over the admittedly too-small work surfaces. When they had finished cooking, they would take their food over to the table and eat it, leaving the mess behind. After eating, they would dump the dirty plates in or beside the only sink, then return to occupy the table once more for the rest of the evening.

At first, we thought perhaps that we had arrived at a bad time, or it was just a one-off. But no, the kitchen was constantly filthy with crumbs, peelings, unused vegetables and generic stains all over the surfaces and the floor. The many flies and other bugs loved such an environment of course.

Part of the explanation was that they were all self-obsessed. Certainly they had no conception of the problems they were causing for anyone else who wanted to use the kitchen. On the other hand, they had no idea of what they were doing to themselves and their own food. Many of them placed their food in open plastic baskets which were stored on shelves. One lunchtime we were in there and could see half a dozen flies crawling over - and presumably vomiting on and then consuming - an unwrapped half loaf of bread. The owner would be eating that bread later (along with a load of s*** from the flies) but hadn't bothered to put it in one of the roll of plastic bags which were sitting right next to it.

Yet surfing has such a clean, wholesome image. Clean-limbed young men and women clad in wetsuits, their handsome faces dripping with spray as they fight the forces of nature aboard their flimsy boards. But what lurks behind that image? Who taught these people consideration for others? Who taught them the simple, basic facts of hygiene? If it was their parents, then we can only hope they made a better job of instructing their offspring in the matter of wiping their own arses. Otherwise, beneath those shiny wetsuits would be pairs of buttocks stuck together in a most disgusting, unhealthy manner!

It wasn't as if the camp hadn't organised any cleaning. However, they used a couple of the Scummy Surfers for that and paid them with free lodging or free hire of surfboards and wetsuits. Perhaps the cleaners weren't as diligent as they might have been, though they also cleaned the toilets and showers and those were ok. We suspect that the camp owners or managers, whom we don't think we ever saw, didn't check enough. Maybe they were on holiday and the lunatics really were running the asylum?

By the second night we had had enough. The final straw came when we arrived to cook our dinner and found that the Scummies (as we called them for short) had cooked a massive communal meal and the entire room looked like a bomb had gone off in a supermarket. We had to clear the area of filth and dirty cutlery and pans before we could get down to preparing our own food.

The next afternoon we decided to take a gentle measure of revenge. The fridge had some letter magnets on it and we arranged those into some rather rude words aimed at our fellow residents; unfortunately, there weren't enough letters for us to make our message completely clear.

Stuck on the kitchen walls, however, were several notices exhorting clients to have respect not only for the environment, but also for their fellow campers. Luckily I found a felt-tip pen on top of the fridge and underneath this last message I added, "So why don't you clean up your own mess, you filthy, ignorant b******s?" Childish, I know, but very satisfying.

However, I was surprised to the point of being gobsmacked the next morning when I went on my daily mission to make breakfast and bring it back to Princess Katy in the van. The kitchen, while not exactly clean, wasn't disgusting. People were washing up. My feet didn't scrunch through a pile of crumbs. I don't know if they had read my amendment or not and suffered a pang of conscience, but for some reason the Surfers were now Slightly Less Scummy!

Unfortunately, we had already decided to leave due to a change in the weather for the worse. That meant I couldn't add something else along the lines of, "See, that wasn't so hard was it?"

So, what did we actually do while in Raglan? Well, not a lot really. It would have been a good place for a night out, with a few promising looking restaurants and bars, one of which even had a band performing. We didn't bother because we have been trying to hold costs down, plus we would have had to have driven back to camp as it was out of town.

We did watch the surfing a couple of times and that was quite interesting. As well as normal surfing, we saw a couple of guys doing it with the aid of paddles. One stood up and used a single-bladed long oar, while the other sat on his board and used a double-ended blade.

Most entertaining, however, were those people just learning to surf. Now, I can't be too rude here because I would have been far, far worse even if I had dozens of lessons. But it was quite amusing to focus with my binoculars on a couple of the Scummies who were obviously in the early stages. We watched one girl for a good 30 minutes and not once did she manage either to stand up on her board or catch a wave.

Katy, who should be good at surfing given her physical abilities, decided that she didn't ever fancy giving it a go. Even those who were good didn't spend much time actually surfing. Most of their effort went into paddling back out to sea and waiting for the right sort of wave to come along. The reward-to-work ratio seemed to be about 10 minutes hard paddling to win a surf lasting a maximum of 20 seconds. Just doesn't seem worth it, does it?

Richard

* Are there such things as lesbian cows? A couple of times we saw a brown 'bullock' attempting to mount a black one. I put it down to the fact that young males of various types of animal perform this sort of behaviour as a method of exerting dominance and presumably as a sort of practice run for the real thing. However, on closer inspection the 'bullock' turned out to be a young female. Ah well, love is blind.