OK, so apologies its now mid March and there has been no blog news. Lets play a little catch up with our January news. Our original plan was to leave New Zealand after Christmas but we are chuffed we decided to stay for the southern hemisphere summer as it has been muchos muchos fun. If you ever visit New Zealand make sure it's during their summer time.

Lets start with the classic English conversation starter and mention the weather. To give an idea of the weather we have been getting I have employed a trusty friend, Google Earth to paint a picture. Google Earth, a series of satellite pictures of the world, gives you the latitude and longitude co-ordinates of your mouse point. I zoomed into our house in Auckland and noted it lies at 36°50'49.37" S and 174°44'08.41" E.

If we undertook that childhood fantasy of digging a tunnel in the garden to the other side of the world, then the exact geographical opposite of our house would be at; 36°50'49.37" N and 6°16'52.59" W. At this location you would find a field, just outside the picturesque town of La Algaida on the Andalucia coast of Southern Spain. So the weather here in January is pretty much the weather you would get in La Algaida in July. Beautiful.

In January I started a new job. I now work for Snowgum, an outdoor shop located on Auckland's main high street, Queen street. This is my second ever retail job, my first was, as a student, in the local corner shop in Clifton. I still fondly remember being sacked on the spot for turning up late, well I was a week late. Hopefully this job doesn't finish with an Alan Sugaresque 'you're fired'. However the new job has been reasonably good fun, it helps that I like the outdoor products we sell and talking to the steady stream of backpackers coming in for that elusive "cheap as possible tent and sleeping bag" has been interesting.

One particularly good story was last week when Dan and Laura came in to the shop and told us about their Fiji experience. Hurricane Chloe also went to Fiji that week and left the main town, Nadi, waist deep in water. Dan and Laura were stuck in a tiny island for a week because no boats would sail in the strong winds. Dan & Laura were forced to stay indoors because Chloe was throwing scull cracking coconuts around. On the second day their alcohol ran out, on the third day all the fresh food on the island was finished, on the forth day all the fresh water was finished. For the following three days they were stuck inside eating cold rice and drinking the juice from the fallen coconuts until the wind died down.

Kat was on her summer holidays for all of January so towards the end of the month we took a summer holiday to Mount Maunganui, and spent a long weekend camping with some of the flatmates. The surf report was for a 4 meter swell on Saturday. Mount Maunganui is a small, surfy type of town along the Coromandel coast is well known for its large shark population and the sharks often bite surfboards and dingies. A few days after we got back this news story was front page.

On Saturday afternoon part of the beach was taken up with an exciting kiwi sport involving the contestants giving themselves wedgies at the start and trying to surf large wooden boats on huge swells, inevitably followed by a swim or a near drowning session. Luckily all the contestants were lifesavers.

The beach was full of curious holidays makers, supporters and lifeguards. Most of the popular beaches in the Auckland area were represented by a tight speedo clad team of lifesavers. We watched the heavy wooden boats being dragged to the waters edge. An old boy with a shotgun, sitting on a high seat stood up and fired into the air, and six teams pushed their boats down the beach to the incoming waves. The object of the race was to row out past the surf, around a buoy, and get back to shore safely, and send one crew member sprinting up the beach to a flag. The skill in the race was down to timing; large waves would lift the boat and catapult all the rowers high into the air, so the boats paused in the shallows waiting for a break in the surf before rowing furiously out to sea. Once around the bouy they tried to catch the swell and surf a wave all the way back in, all the time trying to stop the wave from turning the boat sideways and rolling.

We watched about four races, and saw some spectacular wipe-outs with broken oars and empty boats getting washed up with the men swimming in. The beach suddenly got really full as people crowded ten deep to see the next race, the under 25's female teams! Fit, young, female, lifeguards, complete with wedgies, brought every guy lying on the beach over to watch!

Cooper Out

Love Dan & Kat