May 22, 2006
Ihan Pihalla
The best thing about Auckland afterall is that you can get out of it.
And be in a place like this in an hour or so.
We were lucky to know Ancjelic, who has spent almost 2 years surfing in NZ. Through her we met Atma and Prasad who have a batch (like a mokki) in Piha beach.
And they kindly allowed us to use their bach over the weekend. Wow. We realized how tired we were from the backpackers hell - checking in to a place, hoping that the room walls will be thicker this time, hoping that we won't find hordes of kiddy backpackers planted at the kitchen table for days in a row, hoping that noone will drink our wine that we store in the cupboard downstairs, hoping that we won't have to elbow our way to the sink to wash a cup or cross our knifes with another "guest" for a chopping board. We're actually really quite tired of travelling, packing and going somewhere else almost every day, being budget conscious, cooking in communal kitchens. The sad thing is that we won't have "our own peace" for quite a few months ahead. Neither in Leijonakaupunki, Lithuania, Finland or NZ. We don't have a home...
Anyway, for a change, it was great to stay in a quiet and remote place (just us!) with amazing views.
There's quite a few famous surfing beaches on the West coast from Auckland. Karekare, for example, was used in the movie Piano (remember the lady landing on a beach and her piano being mistreated?), it was shot here!
There's a lot of surfers in these beaches. Its quite dangerous to swim there otherwise. We've been watching some episodes of the reality TV show Piha Rescue and it looks like they're just dragging full loads of boats of nearly drowning people on that beach. People with broken ankles, exhausted, vomiting water, etc. They say, there are very strong undercurrents in Piha.
The ocean didn't seem to be so dangerous when we were there, but we didn't go swimming anyway :(
We went walking and running instead. So beautiful! The things and places around Auckland almost buy out the ugliness and stressfullness of the city itself. Its also pretty amazing to be able to wear a Tshirt at the end of May (that's like European November). I guess, we're just getting dazed by all the magnificent views here. Tell us, is it worth exchanging couple of years of life in Finland or Lithuania for a couple of years in NZ? Hmmm...
Posted by gkligyte at May 22, 2006 10:41 AM