2022-11-28 — Best Boogie

Oh wow! I knew I was behind, but not this behind.

I’m writing this on December 9th USA time.

Oops. 😬

Sorry!

Let’s see… We woke up that morning at the little place that we picked to sleep at right next to the ocean, right where the river lines around and spills into the ocean.

I had hopes of going snorkeling there, as I had read that it was one of the best places to snorkel in all of new zealand. There was a Marine reserve there that prohibited any fishing or removal of anything at all from the beach out to something like 2 km in the water.for a decent ways along the shore.

I had, if I’m remembering right, some phone calls or text messages or emails or something that I had to make, so we drove toward town for a little while until we got reception and I was able to make the communications that I needed to make, or something like that. At some point, and I don’t remember exactly when, we saw some people boogie boarding on the beach, almost as if they were surfing. Instead of just riding the wave in like we were doing before, they were turning right and left and going along the way like a surfer. That was super impressive.

Anyway, we headed back to the snorkeling area after getting the communication stuff done.

Unfortunately, because of all the storminess, the water was really cloudy, so good snorkeling wasn’t realistic. The only animal life that I saw, aside from flies, wasn’t even alive at all: there was a dead seal washed up on the beach a hundred yards or so from the little parking spot that we drove to next to the reserve after we finally got up.

Having things not work out for the snorkeling, I was a bit disappointed, but there’s nothing you can do about stuff like that. The same thing happened in Costa rica, so maybe I’m just not meant to have good snorkeling, despite having bought my own gear this time. 🙃

We drove closer toward town again, back to that place where we had seen the people boogie boarding, and we decided to go out ourselves and give it a whirl.

Boy were we glad we did! That day was the best boogie we’ve had of our whole trip so far!

The waves coming in were so powerful that even the littler ones could push you all the way to shore from pretty far out. The best of the best waves were the double waves where two waves, a smaller one and a bigger one would break on top of each other at the same time and push an absolutely massive amount of water at pretty high speed and super powerfully toward the shore.

In other places we’d boogie boarded, the current would take us down the coast, and we would periodically have to walk back up the beach and start over again so we didn’t get too far away from our stuff and too close to dangerous conditions. But here, the waves were so powerful we could just ride it all the way in and then go back out without getting pushed too far away. Of course the current took us further than our starting spot, but quite slowly, such that we were able to have many rides on the waves before having to walk back down the beach a bit.

That was easily, as I guess I already said, the best boogie boarding we’ve had on the trip so far. It was tons of fun. 🙂

After that bit of fun, we decided to go to some of the places I had on my list of interesting places to see, ReRe Rockslide & ReRe Falls. I didn’t really realize that there were two different places until we got there. We actually passed ReRe Falls on the way to ReRe Rock Slide, getting there faster than perhaps we might have because somebody in a I think white Toyota was riding up our butts during the drive, so Chase drove faster. I think we might also have been in a bit of a hurry because we were trying to do so many things that day. I think we were trying to go to the falls and the slide and also go to all the historical sites from my brother’s time living in that area 25ish years ago.

We had absolutely no idea what to expect at ReRe Rockslide, so when we got there and saw people walking away from the rock slide with boogie boards, we were a little intrigued.

I stopped the couple that was walking away from the rock slide to ask them about what they had experienced there, just making casual conversation and whatnot talking to passers by so to speak, and that’s when they told us about how it worked.

There were also a couple of European girls there who had borrowed the other couple’s boogie boards and were also done with their little adventure at the slide for the day.

Me being me, of course, I started talking to them as well and invited them to join us again for our first time going down the slide.

To our delight, they decided to join us, walking back down with us to watch us take on the new adventure, they themselves not wanting to go again.

A minute or so later, we got our view of what this map stop actually was–a natural rock “slide” (think playground slide and not rock slide like a bunch of rocks sliding down a mountain) that was something like 150 yds long or so, and a nearly completely solid piece of rock that was going down at let’s say maybe a 20° angle with a pretty good amount of water flowing over it, making it a great little natural amusement park ride.

That said, it was still pretty intimidating.

Of course, having two women on the shore watching us, one of whom I was quite physically attracted to, was a bit of motivation to not hesitate. 🙃

Everyone else had been going down the Falls by sitting on there boogie boards, so I gave that a try first, but there was so much weight in one place on the board that I just couldn’t get up any momentum to actually start sliding, so I quite quickly switched from sitting to head first lying down on the boogie board. 🙃

That worked. 😁

I was off like a shot, sliding down at pretty good speed. Down, down, down I went. Twice there were little maybe one and a half or 2 ft wide channels perpendicular to the downward slide that were naturally carved out in the rock. Those were pretty intimidating to come up on because it looked like you would smash down into them and come to an immediate and very painful stop, but that wasn’t the case. Because of the speed that was built up, when you hit those two perpendicular channels one, and then another one a couple seconds later, it was like going through a pothole. You would dip down slightly and smack a little hard against it, but not enough to cause any real problems.

At least not on my first run. 😬

I came splashing down into the big pool of water below having thoroughly enjoyed my ride down. 🙂

The water was deep enough that you had to swim a little bit to get back to where you could stand in order to get over to the side where you climb out and walk back up the dry portion of the huge rock slide.

Again, me being me, I wanted to go multiple times.

That… was a mistake. Though my first trip down the slide was a blast, I tried a different side of the slide my second time around, and that didn’t go so well.

Because of the jarring nature of the ride down, you can’t put your fingers underneath the boogie board to hold you on, otherwise you’re liable to get your fingers absolutely smashed against The Rock as the boogie board rocks forward and backward and smashes into higher and lower portions of the rock face, so you have to try and stay on the boogie board as it’s going down without good handholds.

Well, my second rundown on the right side of the slide, looking from the top, I slipped off my boogie board and, I think it was the second ride, that I smacked my hip into one of those cross channels after slipping off my boogie board nearly completely.

With all the adrenaline from going down the slide, I didn’t realize at first how badly I’d heard it. In fact, I wouldn’t know until probably the next couple of days.

Little me being little me, guess who went down a third time? 🙃

Yeah, I know, I’m a genius. 🧠

This time I thought I was smart, though, I went back to the left side, back where it had worked so beautifully the first time, but this time, I came sliding completely off the boogie board probably 2/3 of the way down, taking the entire rest of the slide with all of the impacts directly against my body, the only part of me not directly in contact with the rock being my arms that were basically just holding the boogie board from sliding away from me down the River.

It was a second painful ride down after my first smooth ride, and definitely my last ride of the day.

Chase went down once after that, and I got a great video of him the entire way down, including a pretty good shot of his face smacking into the pool of water below and sending a spray of water probably 20 or 30 feet out in front of him. 🙃

He had a good, uninjured, time–gratefully.

After the little adventure there, and after having sort of quickly made ourselves acquaintance friends with the European girls, we decided to go over to ReRe Falls together, they also having gone to the slide first.

They stopped to eat a little bit, so we just met them over there and waited for them. Once they arrived, we walked down to the falls, enjoying the beautiful view.

Me being me, and always interested to see what unseen adventures lay nearby, and looking to me like it was possible to get behind the waterfall, and loving the view of a waterfall from behind, how mesmerizing and beautiful it is, I decided to take a little trip behind. 😁

I was right!

It was a very cold journey, as you have to walk through the Falls itself to fully get behind it, and let’s just say the water wasn’t… warm. But once behind the falls, there was probably 8 or 10 ft of space between the roaring water crashing on down in front of me and beside me and the back of the rock face that the waterfall flows over. It made for an absolutely beautiful Vista.

Chase took a few pictures of me from outside looking into the falls with me behind, and then I slid through the falls into the pool of water that the falls splashes down into and swam back to shore.

Though the ladies had already put their regular clothes back on, my little trip behind the falls was enough to convince them to put their swimming suits back on and to join me behind the falls to see the little vista.

For the second trip behind the falls, it was just one of the girls, Chase and I. They enjoyed themselves, but didn’t want to slide into the water and swim back, preferring to walk back the way they came.

The other woman, a bit less adventurous, finally decided that she wanted to go back behind it as well, so she changed clothes as well, and on my third trip behind the falls, I got my phone, put it inside a waterproof tupperware container, and took a video of the whole experience. It was great!

After our slide and waterfall adventures, I invited the girls out to dinner with us, and again to our delight, they accepted. 🙂

Not knowing anything about Gisborne, and not wanting choosing a place to eat to be a big ordeal, chase and I tried to find a decent place on our drive back into town using google. Unfortunately, eateries and restaurants and whatnot in New Zealand close a heck of a lot earlier, seemingly, then they do in the United states. Many were already closed or would soon be by the time we arrived at 7:00 ish. But we finally found a place that had good reviews, so we drove to it.

Unfortunately, when we got there, there was no restaurant at all. 🙃

So during a stop at a traffic light, I jumped out of the car, ran back toward the girls’ car, let them know of the problem, and then we decided to go to the next restaurant that was on our list. It had absolutely fabulous reviews, so we thought there was no way we could go wrong.

What we didn’t realize, however, was that the food was rather expensive, and the portions were absolutely teeny tiny. 🙃

It was like… a nice restaurant.

Oops.

So we ordered a bunch of food, not yet realizing that the portions were miniscule, enjoyed conversation with each other getting to know each other a little bit, and then laughing a little bit as the portions came out. They were so so so tiny. The girls and I ate what we had ordered, enjoying the food itself, but still being quite hungry afterward, and Chase sort of fumbled around with his food, neither enjoying it nor filling his belly. 🙃

After laughing about the little adventure and still being quite hungry, we decided to do a little restaurant hopping and made our way to the local Domino’s Pizza just like we had with the German girls the week before. At least there we knew both the prices and the quantities, so we all bought pizza, the girls insisting on paying this time, and we were finally able to fill our bellies.

We ate the pizza at a picnic table overlooking the beach near where Chase and I had been boogie boarding earlier that day, watching the last rays of sunlight disappear behind the water and mini peninsula in the distance, and then talking well into the night.

It was during that talking into the night that we found out that the one I was attracted to already had a boyfriend, so that put a damper on that pretty quickly. 🙃

Still, we enjoyed the experience together and as late as it was, we decided to not bother trying to go back to the places where we were going to sleep for the night and just both crashed their in that parking lot, they in their little camper van, and Chase and I in Sophie.

Chase and I watched a little bit more of the Lord of the rings, before getting tired and crashing for the night.

Sorry, again, for being so behind! I will do my best to try and catch up over the next couple of days! It’s been a bit of a wild ride without our normal travel style, so the normal times that I’ve taken to write in my journal here haven’t really been available. 🙃

Love to all. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen