Graymouth

Hey everyone we hope all is well at home! We awoke to more rain this morning... If there's ever a new blog post there's a good chance its raining because we always seem to retreat to the nearest library at the slightest hint of precipitation. We've been on the south island now for about a week and this is how its turned out. Day one we woke up an hour late in martinborough so we had to rush to try to make our ferry time from the Nisland to the Sisland...which we didn't. Luckily we were able to transfer our time to 1 oclock for no additonal price. Once on the ferry, we met a few girls from the east coast and talked with them on the ride. We came to realize how sweet our van deal was, and how great our trip had been just by talking to them. We've been very blessed and lucky with places we've been, people we've met and of course the waves we've scored. Once in picton, where the ferry drops us off, we flipped a coin to see if we should head to the east coast to dive or to the west to surf. It landed on surf but we decided to dive... Why did we go through the effort? After going by a dive shop and dropping 250 on a spear for wiley, a mask for me and a snorkel for taylor, we were on our way to robinhood bay, which would end up being the worst mistake ever!
We made it to our destination with an hour of sun left and rushed out for a dive. The bay itself was beautiful and secluded and looked very promising for a few days stay. After pulling out a few pawa and some muscles we set up to cook and leave. Thats when we noticed our driverside tire was extremely low. In most situations this wouldn't be much of a problem but of course we didn't have a spare tire. There was one house in the bay so we drove up to it and asked the man there if he had a pump we could use, to which he replied yes and our hopes sored. We tried to inflate it for 10 minutes and gave up. The man then offered for us to stay in the old farm house next door and we said we'd love to and thanks.
After cooking our diner and setting up camp inside, we began to notice how creepy the house was. There were blood drops on the ground in one of the rooms, curtains covering all the windows, doors with handles only on the outside and broken window panes, creepy detective magazines everywhere, and sounds of doors opening and closing! Not to mention it was howling wind outside and we were in the middle of NOWHERE!!!!!! All this combined with our little horror story jokes completely scared the crap out of us and we completely thought we were going to be the headlines of the next mornings news. It was a full on scooby doo storyline where we magically get a flat tire and a farmer offers for us to stay in his abandoned house, hmmmmm.... We basically ran out of the house with our stuff and grabbed our tent and headed for the beach. After setting up camp far far away from the house we felt safe and were out till morning. We headed back in the morning and cleaned up all our other stuff and put it all back in the van. The owner came out and we started talking. Thats when he told us...Apparentally a woman had died in the house a while back and her ghost still haunted the place! REALLY??? WOW thanks for telling us now!!! That answered all our fears and we laughed at ourselves. The man and his family ended up being very nice and took us to town to get a spare and everything.
We were off and on our way to the west coast with our new tire and were about an hour and a half out of blemington when we noticed the tire going low again... We were all so bummed and headed back to fix the problem. Turns out it was just the little nosel thing that puts air in the tire so we fixed it and left. Once in westport, we began cooking dinner on the beach and were getting all ready for bed when we heard an echoing siren from in town. Of course this scared thacrap out of us and on top of our already suspicious day, we thought someone was out to get us so our creative minds got the better of us. the first thing we thought was TIDAL WAVE!!!!!! we threw everything in the car and rushed to higher ground where we found out it was a brush fire siren. Talk about a great day huh?
The last few days we've been in Graymouth and have gotten some great waves. We made friends with the branch president on sunday at church and were invited for dinner and stay at their house. Their family radiated love and brightened our spirits. We also got to go out with the missionaries here and learned a ton about the missionary work on the south island. truely an experience. We're now on our way south for some fishing and hiking into secret spots that we don't even know about. Cheers!

A weeks worth of work

its been a while since we've written last. Currently, we're staying in martinborough at wileys and now our friends house, the martins. We left gisborne tuesday evening after waiting in the van for 6 hours outside wiley's bosses house in pursuit of a check. this was especially important seeing that wiley is short alredy on cash money. over the six hour period we had multiple water and slap fights. after being crowned victorious in all battles, i, scott clark, decided to let everyone rest and read in the back. the few days before leaving we had some really cool experiences. topping the list for all of us i'm guessing was seeing conference. we had a marathon prettymuch and watched all of the sessions on both saturday and sunday, with a mega water fight in between the days. the saturday night before leaving, we stayed in the church parking lot instead of our usual kaiti ghetto parking spot outside the fijians house. It was a good thing too because apperantly a few people aka super gnarly chicks, from the mongral mob showed up, pulled some dude into the street to the exact spot we had been parking, and beat him down with a bat and crobars. Oh how i love church. We were also very blessed sunday night to be invited to dinner by the bishop and his family (who are great) and we were able to squeeze in a wash too. Before leaving Gisborne for good/ever/over it/ dont wanna go back/ people are great but we wanna be somewhere else i scored a macking day out at the island, the premire spot is gissy. wiley paddled out a little later after me and scored some good ones too.
After driving 5 hours and sleeping somewhere in the outskirts of martinborough, we met up with edward, wileys mate, on accident on our way to check the surf and we all met eachother. Edward told us to follow him to a spot where the wind was hurricane force and required the van to go for a brutal 4x4 expedition. of course we didn't go out. He went off to work and we headed east towards their little batch on the southern tip of the north island, about 45 se from martinborough and on the beach!(the cove pic is from their batch) From the batch, you can see a giant mountain/rock thingy that was superimposed into the lord of the rings multiple times as well as tons of places to dive and hang out. much to our suprise, when we showed up, there was a full on colony of seals in the cove and around the house. There were so many!! there were seals in all the knooks and crannys and they were even coming out of the bushes.. literally. Because of all the bad expeiriences we've had with seals, this was pretty much our worst nightmare and we all screamed like little girls. i might've wet my pants a little. I felt like i was in the movie The ghosts and the darkness sealion edition. We then hunted seals with a squirt gun for the next hour and a half.
After deciding there were no waves around the batch, we spontaniously decided to hike into a break called the spit and seconds. Multiple right and left hand points that are super epic. We scored some good ones as the swell was dying and set up camp in the wood furnace warmed hut on the beach (pictured above). Nice and cozy. since then we've just been hanging out with Edward and Auriga to let the rain pass.
ONe other little adventure that we had was that wiley and i picked up some work with edward docking. This is where you take new lambs that are so precious and cute and innocent in every way.... and cut their tails off, clip their ears and rubberband off things that shouldn't be so they can't have kids anymore! It was the most burtal thing i've ever done in my life and i felt like i was participating in the holocaust. it was terrible. It was a very cool thing to learn though especially if we need to pick up work in the south island. taylor got video of it too. YAY! not. anyways, they all lived and are happy it's over with and so am i. We leave for the South island on wednesday so until next time, you stay classy ventura...and ojai...and camarillo...and the valley...cheers!

A Change in Weather

Sunny and Northwestern winds brings smiles to everyone. Taylor and i were smiling when we awoke to surf. Wiley was smiling when he found out he might not get hypothermia at work today...i think i even saw a local maori kid smiling today which is semi uplifting since most the time the have the look of i want tourist blood. everything is in order for a good day. The other night we stayed in front of the Fijians house that wiley works with so it'd be easier to getup in the morning. we were promptly invited in and ate with them. FISH HEAD YAY!!! they had this huge bucket full of snapper heads and some sort of tea that smelled bad so we didn't drink it. It was really cool though because we all sat on the floor in a circle and ate and laughed all night. Fijians are really funny and stoked and extremely hard to understand. there were alot of head nods being passed around because no one really understood eachother. Taylor and i headed down to the mahia peninsula again yesterday in search of waves and got some fun surf at a place called last chance. It was as menacing as the spots name sounds. We chased some sheep while we were there and the pic of us on the table is overlooking gisborne...cheers

rain rain go away come again some other day

Yesterday and today have been full of rain and wind and we feel like a little boat in the middle of the tasmian sea in our wee van. The forcast isn't looking to promising either with rain and wind for the rest of the week. Probably not the best week for wiley to decide to finish up forestry work... Saturday the waves were superpumping in gisborne and there was a magical little left bar breaking. lucky for me, about 2 hours into the session i jumped off my board in the tube on a wave and somehow ruptured my brand new wetsuit, on my butt. Wiley laughed for about an hour straight when he saw it and now i've gotta fix my suit with wetsuit glue that cost 30 bucks. stupid new zealand and everything being expensive. Wiley is finishing working as a woofer today and last night the woofing hosts went to pick up the new sweedish woman woofer. we all had our hopes high for a babe but classic, she was 50 and looked exactly like we hadn't pictured. I think wiley had to share a room with her...haha stoked. well we only have a week or so left in gisborne so mom you'll need to start checking the weather further south soon. the ducks are our next dinner...light or dark meat? Oh and the missionaries are spotting us a kai or dinner tonight. Fish and chips! Sweetas!!! cheers

We've been here in gisborne for a little over a week now...I'm surfed out, taylor is semi sick, and Wiley has done nothing but complain about woofing(babysitting mike). Wiley is finally over being sick though after his 15+day illness. We've got about another week here while wiley finishes working forestry so he can have enough money to head out with us. Taylor and I have been killing the time by surfing and going on splits with the missionaries. Starting Sunday, we went out with them once or twice a day inbetween surfs till wednesday. We headed down to the mahia peninsula and scored perfect waves on thursday. Probably the best lefts I've ever seen or surfed. It was truely an amazing day and after 6 hours of surfing, we were beat. Now we wait for wiley to finish work and try to get some surf and stay healthy. the next few days are looking promising for diving too. I got a new board because mine was a bummer, and wiley sliced his armpit the first surf on his new board, (see the picture below). 5 stitches later and a few days and he was back out. All in all we're all doing well... Cheers