Papamoan Life

This morning our hosts made us a homemade 'energiser' breakfast of poached eggs on Vogel's - a dense, grain-packed bread created by a Swiss man - cheese, pesto, hummus, and tomato chutney. We needed the energy as we were about to consolidate what we had learned yesterday with another session of surfing.

Energiser

Sadly, the weather wasn't as fair as yesterday and a grey drizzle set in as we made the short trip to Papamoa beach. The surf wasn't (according to the expert's eye) as consistent or as powerful as yesterday. Nevertheless, we resolved to get some practice and donned our wetsuits. The rain, we reasoned, wouldn't matter once we were in the water.

I narrowly avoided becoming the next viral YouTube hit, "Man hit in face by surfboard", and managed to catch a couple of waves, but my success at standing on the board was limited. The surf was described as "poor" by the expert, so I will use that as my excuse.

The fickle nature of the North Island autumn weather conspired to deliver a beautiful blue-skied and warm afternoon after this morning's drizzle. We took advantage of the clear skies and relaxed in the garden.

Papamoan sunset

In the afternoon, our hosts ventured to show us that it isn't only Australians that can throw some sausages on the barbecue. For dinner, we tucked into a feta salad, potato salad, and grilled tofu sausages (roast red onion and parmesan, sundried tomato and kalamata olive) with New Zealand white wine. Perfect fare for the weather.

At the last moment, we decided to take a post-prandial trip to Fernland hot baths. By now it was night, and the baths were surrounded by natural ferns, lit up by coloured lights, and framed the clear dark night sky and the constellations of stars.