Surfing in Whangarei

Since James was away shooting in Wellington, I decided to head up to Whangarei for a weekend of surfing and beach fun. Sal was on call back in Hamilton till 8am Sat morning, so Friday afternoon Si and Charlie headed up to Auckland to pick me up before heading up to Whangarei. We arrived at the campsite at 8pm pretty hungry, so we pitched our tents and went out in search of food. We managed to find a dodgy little pub full of locals on the outskirts of town, but the food was pretty good and so was the price so we stuck around for a few beers, returning back to the campsite around midnight.
Saturday morning we got up and headed out to the surf beach. We turned up at the first beach (sandy bay) to find 8ft waves, an excited Bara and a slightly worried looking Charlie, after Bara taking a while to get over Charlie's comical question to a rather cool looking surfer (she asked him if there were any rocks to avoid - to which his answer was, 'nope its called Sandy Bay!') we decided (rather foolishly) to head out and have a go. Since I didn't really know what I was doing I had 2 rather nasty nose-dive tumbles which left me rather shell shocked and deciding it was better for me to sit on the beach and watch rather than heading back out (I later found out that I managed to dink Sal's board in one of my tumbles - something that didn't go down too well) After that drama we headed out to a different beach where the waves were much more manageable. Sal and the others arrived eventually, with Sal being the great sister she is, she turned up with lunch. We then headed back out to the water - and I managed to stand up! Yippee! That evening with around 9 of us we decided to have a big BBQ at the campsite with corn on the cob (a new BBQ favourite of mine) and steak.
The next day (re-fueled with a pancake breakfast) we headed out for a short forest work to see a kauri tree and then headed back to the beach for more fun. 2 games of volleyball later and more surfing and it was time to head back to Auckland for another weeks work.