Castlepoint: a Hidden Beauty

Castlepoint. A place I would have happily stayed for many days. Beautiful bays surrounded by sun-warmed hills covered in soft grass. Sea cliffs. Winding trails through the country side leading to breath taking overlooks and hidden waves without a soul in the line up. I was enchanted. I spent equal time in the water, mostly alone, and in the hills with my camera.

The people I did meet were, as always, friendly and one young ferry worker in for the weekend from Wellington led me to a hidden break he called Christmas Bay. We climbed barefoot, surfboards in hand up a steep ridge before breaking from the trail and hiking through prickly heather and thistles down a steep embankment. At the bottom, a pod of seals sat fat in the sun, idly watching our descent. I was baking in my thick neoprene wetsuit. The conditions were perfect and we surfed in the sun all day. I was fairly certain that I would die of dehydration on the climb back up, but it was impossible to leave the water. Set after set of turquoise waves rolled past us in an unbroken chain of perfection.

On my second day, I surfed other breaks, including the main beach break in front of the village and "The Gap" pictured above. The seals joined in on my session there, and I would have given anything for a waterproof housing for my camera on more than one occasion. The backdrop was breath taking and I don't think the smile ever left my face. Conditions slowly became wild, but the sea cliffs protecting the entrance to the bay (how the gap got its name), kept most of the wind and chop outside their walls. I wished for more board under my feet at one point (or less exhausted shoulders).

When exhaustion finally set in, I paddled back to shore and decided to put my legs to use. Sunset wasn't too far from the horizon so I hurredly stripped out of my rubber, grabbed my tripod and set into the hills.

Watching waves filter in through "The Gap"

I spent the last hours before sunset ascending a wooded hill that leveled out and opened to a view of the bay I had spent the day surfing in. It was a fantastic evening. The wind was brisk, but the lingering sun kept a warm kiss on my skin as I walked through the tall grass. All in all, it was a good day and I would be sad to see it end. The following morning I was to drive to Wellington to catch a ferry to begin my adventure on the South Island.

Exploring New Zealand's East Coast

Does this count as a selfie?

It had rained as I slept. The sky was still overcast and threatened further downpour as I pulled out of the turnoff where I had spent the night. Ocean Beach was my first destination, as recommended by a local out of Napier the night before. Hopefully I would score.

Ocean Beach is hardly what I expected. It consists of approximately 5 permanent residential structures and two to three more trailers, all parked in front of a rather desolate stretch of beach, lined by green grassy hills from horizon to horizon. There were certainly waves. And current. Lots of it. The swell had arrived as predicted, but the wind was uncooperative. For those of you who don't surf, that means a near impossible paddle through heaving white water. There were no clear sets, just choppy white caps giving up their foam to the stormy skies. I decided to brave the paddle in hopes of finding that single drop in.

I didn't make it very far. The disorganized waves seemed to conspire to push me back to shore as my shoulders burned with futile effort. The current swept me down the beach several hundred yards in a matter of minutes. Exhausted and panting, I finally left the water and trudged back up the beach. And tried again.

This time, I waited and watched the waves first. I did what I should have done from the beginning: Observed the ocean before choosing how to attack. I found what looked like a patch of deep water that might provide a rip out past the breaking waves and waited for a lull in the sets. My patience paid off and I was soon past the white water, waiting for my first wave.

There were no clean lines, no curling lips. Only moving peaks that might provide a drop and a two or three second ride. But it was enough. I was in the water. Looking back at shore provided a beautiful if somewhat gloomy backdrop of ominous sky and mountain tops.

As I waited for a wave to come my way, I began to notice that the rip that had so conveniently taken me past the break was now dragging me even farther out to sea. Already tired from the exertion of making it this far, I became nervous about being taken out so far. I began to paddle back towards the beach and found it almost as difficult to make it back in as it was to get out. But an obliging wave came through and provided me with both my exit and a fun little ride back to the beach.

Surfing wasn't so successful, but this log provided a few good long exposures.

I decided to call it quits, based on the conditions and opted to use the morning for exploration and photography of the beach before driving on to Waimarama.

A 15 second exposure from Waimarama Beach towards Bare Island.

Waimarama was only slightly more surfable than Ocean Beach and it wasn't long before I was out of the water and taking pictures again. I was able to take the picture below using my new 10 stop neutral density filter from hitech. Unfortunately, there was a lot of light leak, something that the filter received mixed reviews about online. The corners of the image were covered in flares of bright vignetting. I was forced to crop a large bottom section out and spend a lot of time with a healing tool to fix the top corners. The end result was still quite satisfying for my first try at a daytime long exposure.

I spent a good portion of the afternoon walking up and down the beach, drawing curious looks from locals as I waded around in my wet suit with a heavy tripod and camera. As the afternoon grew to a close, I stripped out of my wetsuit, and prepared to head to Castlepoint 4 hours down the coast.

 

 

The First Two Days

Wow. Where to begin?

My trip started with a bang, to say the least. As I boarded my flight from Abu Dhabi to Sydney, I was excited to finally be on my way to New Zealand for surf and adventure. Unfortunately it didn't quite play out as one would hope, at least initially. With about four hours left before arrival in Sydney, my stomach began to turn flips. Food poisoning. As each painful hour drug on, I found myself spending more and more time on my knees in the cramped airplane lavatory. By the time we landed, I was so weak and dehydrated that I couldn't make it to the toilet without assistance and had to resort, for the first time in my life, to a little white barf bag. A wheelchair was waiting for me in Sydney, and I was rolled off to St. Vincent hospital where I spent 5 hours on an IV. Needless to say, I missed my connection to New Zealand.

When I finally exited the hospital, it was a bright, beautiful fall day in Sydney. I caught a cab back to the airport with high hopes that I might still make it to Auckland in time to pick up my rental camper van. On arrival, I was sadened to discover that I had missed the last flight to Auckland provided by my carrier. They told me that they would happily put me on the first flight the following day and that unless I was willing to pay a different airline, that was all they could do.

I reasoned that my luggage was already in Auckland, and that with only two weeks to see the country, it was worth the money to go ahead and get there the same day. I booked with Quantas airline just in time for boarding and was soon on my way. Two hours later, in Auckland, I discovered that Virgin Airlines had not only poisoned me, but also lost my luggage. I had just paid a hefty 400 dollar fee for a plane ticket the same day and to top it all off, the rental agency was closed and refused to refund my money for the first day despite the fact that I had spent it in the hospital.

As you may well imagine, I was beginning to experience a full gamut of negative emotions: anger, frustration and discouragement. I booked a room at the cheapest motel I could find and promptly went to sleep praying for a better day tomorrow. The next morning, I arrived back at the airport only to discover that the airline still had no idea where my luggage was. It wasn't until mid afternoon that they located it and it wasn't until well after 10 at night that I had it in my hands. With two days down the drain, I called back to my boss and begged for an extra day of leave to make up for my lost time. Of course, he said no.

I hit the road in my shiny green and purple camper van and headed for Raglan, looking forward to a sunrise surf session to wash it all away. I drove for three hours, parked my van along side the road overlooking Manu Bay, crawled in the back and closed my eyes, dreaming of blue, curling waves. When I woke the next morning, I was rewarded with this:

Lines of swell to the horizon, arriving at two of Raglan's three world class point breaks.

Tierra del Fuego (Plains of Fire)

Glacier at Puerto Moreno.

The next morning we woke early, excited for our journey to begin. We had arranged for a rental car the night before, and while we waited for it to arrive, we invited anyone who was awake to come along. A Canadian, Khalil Rihane, who we had not really gotten to know yet, decided he had nothing else better to do and packed his belongings just as the rental car showed up to the hostel. Little did he know, he was in for a wild ride.

Soon enough, we were on the road and headed south. A note that will become important later in the story is that Felix had no license and didn't really know how to drive. On any account, I took first turn at the wheel and soon we were surrounded by the foothills of the Andes.

Our plan was to drive south, see the glaciers (largest in South America) at Puerto Moreno, and then drive into Chile. From there, we would have to take a ferry to Tierra del Fuego, and pass back into Argentina.

The weather quickly turned frigid as we continued south, and soon it was painful to get out of the car. I did not take too many photographs during the trip, and the ones that I did take were rushed in order to get out of the cold.

That night, we did not stop, because there were no places to stay before we reached the desert. Oil had recently been struck and men had flocked from all over Argentina in the hope of finding work. We back tracked over 100 miles in search of a town with a single vacancy. We were unsuccssful, so drove to the end of the tundra, filled our car with gas and hoped for the best. Civilization ended for the next 450-500 miles. We didn't know if we would be able to make it on a single tank of gas, but we decided to chance it.

All of us were exhausted, and after we had all taken a turn at the wheel, we decided to risk letting Felix drive. We were awoken to the sensation of spinning not much later. As I looked out of the window, I saw the world rushing past, spinning out of control. The road had turned to ice in the night, and Felix, having little experience driving, had continued to travel well over 90 mph regardless of the ice. I thought, rightfully so, that we were about to die. Miraculously, the car remained on all four wheels and we found ourselves in a shallow ditch on the left side of the road. 5th gear was no longer fully operable, but we were able to continue on.

I am going to keep this post brief for now, as I didn't write much in my journal during that time. The details are fuzzy as to what places we saw in what order. I will repost when my fellower travelers fill in some of the blanks for me. For now, I will leave you with this picture of Broos, right before we were arested by the National Park rangers for jumping the fence to explore around the glacier:

Back in Bariloche

When we arrived back in Bariloche (after a night of heavy drinking), we started researching our Epic Journey to Chile. Our first stop was to check out the Club Andino Bariloche (Andean Mountain Club). The guide there was quick to squelch our dreams. He pointed out the obvious to us: We were at the southern end of the world in the winter with little to no experience. We weren't convinced and kept prodding for more information. Finally, he told us we could do it, but we would need a guide and would have to rent or buy a lot of extra equipment. The total price was around 5000 pesos for the journey, which would take about two weeks. That bit of information was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Our next thought was to check out one of the more local trails that would take us closer to 3 days. We found the perfect trail head about 20 miles outside of town. The Frey trail would take us on a circuit that would last about two and a half days at a minimum, and with me always trailing back to take pictures, closer to three. We bought a map from the park ranger building in town, bought the food and gear we would need and sprinted after the bus headed for the trail head just as it was getting ready to take off.

Fortunately for us, a snow storm was creeping over the horizon, promising an exciting ascent. The first flakes started to fall as we unloaded from the bus at the ski resort adjacent to the trail head. The storm became heavy about an hour in and we were soon wading in knee to waist high snow. Luckily, a group of five more experienced climbers passed us right away, so we had a trail to follow. We would have been hopelessly lost other wise.

Keeping up with 6'5" and 6'8 hikers is a challenge, even in the best of states. It was not long before I was regretting the previous night's drinking, and lagging behind. Regardless, we made it to the top of the trail in 3 hours and 45 minutes, which was a full hour faster than the advertised time required. We were quite proud of ourselves.

When we arrived at the shelter it was really snowing hard, and we were hoping for a blazing fireplace or at least a decent wood stove to warm us up and dry out our soaking wet clothes. We weren't prepared to find a small cabin devoid of any heat. there was a wood stove about the size of two shoe boxes stacked one atop the other. It gave off heat in less than 2 foot radius and was absolutely useless for anything but drying socks.


The caretaker of the refuge was a member of the Andean Club, where we had earlier done our research for the trek. He was very kind, and for a small fee cooked us dinner and made us cups of hot chocolate. I think his name was David, but I can't remember for sure. He assured us that this was the end of the road for us. Without better gear and a proper guide, we would not survive the attempt to finish the 3 day hike. Despite his advice, Broos was determined that we weren't men if we didn't continue the next morning. It took a lot of convincing to get him down the mountain the next day.

When we woke up the next morning, I cooked up some pasta and what was left of our dried sausage for our breakfast. A warm meal was welcome after passing the night in a cold floor with only a thin mat between us and the ground.

After breakfast, we headed outside to find a dazzling blue sky. We all took pictures for a while and then said our goodbyes. The group that had passed us earlier the previous day struck out first, thankfully. Any trace of the trail had been obliterated by the storm the night before and we would never have found it.

We practically sprinted down the mountain, and after a while grew tired of following the trail. We were overlooking the valley, on the other side of which was the town we were headed for. A river meandered in the general direction we wanted to to, so we made or way away from the trail down the slope. Eventually we made it to the stream and started following it. The banks were at first low and the water shallow. Soon we found ourselves stuck in waist deep water with steep banks on either side. The water, while freezing, was refreshing. I was wearing way too many layers and steaming from the head every time I removed my cap and hood.

Shortly we arrived back at the ski resort and caught the first bus back to Bariloche. We were soaked to the bone, tired and happy. And we had a plan to make up the lost Chile adventure. We would take a road trip to Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world.