8/4/09 Our last night at Surf 'n Snow Backpackers at last! We had to pick up our hired car from Auckland airport rather than at the city branch, so to save having to pay for both of our transfers, Dave went and picked it up alone while I checked us out and looked after the luggage until he came back to pick me up. We drove down to Raglan, made and ate some sandwiches by the harbour, and paid for two nights at the campsite in town.
After we'd done this we drove to the black sand beach we'd heard about! It wasn't as black as I'd hoped, more just grey/brown, but apart from a bunch of Japanese people running around playing some sort of game on one side, there was practically nobody else around so it was quite peaceful. We'd decided to swim at the other black sand beach we'd heard about, in the harbour at Raglan itself, so we didn't go in the sea here. The beach back in Raglan had darker sand so was more impressive, though it still wasn't jet black like I'd imagined it would be before I came to NZ. We both went in for a quick dip, and made our way back to the car as quickly as we could because of the severe wind chill. The water was pretty cold as well.
Soon afterwards it clouded over and began raining, so we sat in the car and planned what we'd do the next day, weather permitting. We'd noticed that you could hire kayaks from Raglan Backpackers for $5 for two hours, so we thought we'd kayak in the morning and then go to Manu Bay and hire a surfboard in the afternoon. Manu is known to surfers worldwide for having the longest left hand break in the world, so we thought it would be a great experience for us to have a bit of a surf there.
For dinner we got some lovely fish & chips from town - tarakihi fish, which is common here. Then we had two games of pool and watched some TV in the TV room, including the film Crocodile Dundee.

9/4/09 We woke up to rain, and it carried on and off all morning, so the kayaking was out. Although still cloudy after lunch it didn't rain, so we drove to Manu to have a look around if nothing else. The beach is side on to the waves, as another beach continues round the bay, and is rocky, but a lot of surfers were out anyway. The clouds went away, and it was so sunny and hot that as we walked around and watched the surfers I thought that maybe we could go back to the beach we'd been to yesterday and hire a surfboard for ourselves - but then within a few minutes more clouds drifted over, and as we made our way back to the car it began pouring with rain so we had to run for it. Surfing was out as well now, because it remained cloudy and chilly for the rest of the day. If we'd had wetsuits we might have done it, but without them we knew it would just be too cold.