new surf dialogue

February, 18^th 2010

We finally gave in and paid for a nights’ accommodation in Opunake on the southern curve of the Taranaki bulge.  We hadn’t spent any money on a place to stay since Auckland, living out of our van and with the Blakeney’s in Anaura Bay. The van was getting a little funked out, as were Crista and I, not having had a shower for several days while ensconced in the fruitless search for decent New Zealand surf before settling into our next WWOOF stay. We found a hostel appropriating called, the “Surf Lodge”, and the fixing’s for a locally grown organic feast. Two doors down was the fish shop with fresh local Gurnard fillets to cook up for lunch. A few more doors down was the organic butcher shop and we picked up a couple porterhouse cuts for dinner to go along with the veggies we bought from the Te Koha  organic/biodynamic farm outside of Napier yesterday. That place was awesome. Along with the produce they were selling, they were also giving away there less than perfect pears, plums and courgettes (zucchini).

 Leaving Anaura Bay last Friday, we headed for that place on the map which has garnered a reputation for great waves and a history of pilgrimage by some of surf culture’s most iconic figures. In a Surfer’s Journal article published in 2009, New Zealand photo journalist Logan Murray, adding mystique and notoriety to what he describes as, “A remote sliver of rugged farm land surrounded by the southern Pacific Ocean,” and “home to a tribe of hard-core Kiwi surfers,” doesn’t name this well-known destination – to both globe trotting surf denizens, as well every Kiwi in the country –  in his article. However, he talks openly of the icons who have spent time here, along with the dates of their travels here, most notably Miki Dora’s well published stint  in the 1970’s. One of the first conversations I had with Scrubbs and Louia upon arrival was in regards to this very fact. When Dora’s scams and the FBI caught up with him, and he fled the Interpol hands of doom for other foreign shores in his never ending search for perfect empty waves, he left behind all his trinkets and personal effects that were subsequently auctioned off in Gisborne. Scrubbs and Louia’s lawyer friend ended up with piles of his photographs from that auction and suggested that I give him a call, that he’d love to share them with me as well as shoot the shit on surf culture in New Zealand. Unfortunately, we had to move on…

For shit’s and giggles, I’m not going to name this place either (although I think I did in an earlier post). Look at a map.

A rugged sliver of tide pools

 Finding a “remote sliver of rugged farm land surrounded by the southern Pacific Ocean,”  and close enough to Gisborne, as Murray notes, to drive there for dinner and  a movie and back to the rural wave rich confines in the dark is not to difficult. We drove there from Gisborne in the late afternoon, after unsuccessfully attempting to have our back door lock on the van fixed, drove around the determined sliver of land, before settling on a sunset roadside pullout with some offshores holding up ridable wave lines breaking off the high tide reefs front and center. A sign of morning wave harvests? No. The winds shifted and shafted the swell, gusting all over the place. We explored the community for the next couple of days, growing increasingly frustrated with the weather and lack of swell. Having been in New Zealand for a month now, and not having found any decent surf was becoming a problem. Patience and outlooks growing dim. Romantic visions disappearing with each cross shore gust of schizo wind blow and undeveloped swell predictions. Throwing a bit of salt into our ant bites and mozzie bumps, the WWOOF hosts we had called were not taking any travelers. Fuck! So we head further south, deep into the Wairoa district, and down beach access roads that lead to waveless coastal landscapes. After waking up in Napier, a seaside resort community/shipping harbor town on the south end of Hawkes Bay, we decide to go cross country and head for the Taranaki region after speaking to a WWOOF host who enthusiastically accepted our offer of hands on dirt digging skills on her property. The van struggled its way over the mountain passes, radiator sucking water fast as the altitude gained on us and the air thinned, but we quickly moved east to west, hoping to scream down the other side of the country and straight into some surf. At Lake Taupo, we were entertained by yet another resort community, and offered me quite a bit of reflection on the reading I’ve been doing on the Tourist Gaze. These communities of Napier and Taupo are progeny of the seaside resorts that sprang up in Great Britian during the Industrial Revolution. For Europeans during the 19^th century, the ocean was still a place to fear. There was no romantic idolization of the vast horizon, or joy found in playing in the ocean’s underworld. A growing community from the upper classes were discovering mind and body health benefits from soaking in ocean though, travelling from their inland urban centers to the rural seaside outposts to “take the Cure” that the oceans saltwaters and medical staff provided at exclusive health centers. As new romantic visions of the natural world were published in poetry and prose forms, and combined with increased publishing abilities of the infantile modern era, growing working/middle class mobility and affordable mass transportation through the improved rail road systems, the tourism industry boomed and the ocean became a magnet for fun and sun and escape from the wonderful world of full time employment and the prudish conservatism of the Victorian household moral system. The natural landscape was quickly developed at these resort communities, as entrepreneurs set up industry that would, ironically, provide all the comforts of home and bring drastic change to the rural communities being invaded by the beast of modernity. Where once the Tourist Gaze was set upon the natural landscape, it becomes centered on the developed man over nature attractions – the posh restaurants, bungy jumps, poolside bar service, or nightly entertainment. And that is what we see today in places like Napier and Taupo. Grotesque bodies of development and convenience, that attract international crowds through tourist marketing of pre-packaged vacations that promise to erase the stress and mundaneity of one’s everyday existence. These resort communities make travel easy, but create(d) ever evolving social dynamics between the tourist and the host (people and landscape). The surf world has been developing its own resort community infrastructure for the past several decades now, and that is something that I’m beginning to look into with my thesis research as well. My initial forays into surf culture, while backpacking down the coast of Mexico ten years ago and working at a “surf resort” north of Zihuatanejo without any knowledge of surf history or culture whatsoever has been a fundamental inspiration and experiential research starting point for this project and for my life in general. I’ve seen the positives and the negatives from environmental and social perspectives, and I’m really filling in the gaps with the readings I’ve been doing on this trip. I just read an excellent piece by Steve Barilotti, a long time Surfer magazine photojournalist and editor, published in 2002, about the state of affairs in Bali and other Indonesian surf tourist hotspots that he’s been travelling to for years. Since Europeans began setting up their colonial tourist settlements here in the 1930’s, life for the locals has been a mad capped plunge into the Western vision of civilization and a story of cultural adaptation for better or for worse that has led to a huge sex industry, environmental pollution and increased crime. Long story short- and please understand that these posts are blurbs of idea’s and quickly typed ruminations in the form of a travelogue that will be developed in much greater coherency in my thesis-we all need to be taking a step back and reflecting a bit on the world we are creating and promoting through our travel experiences. Who and how are we affecting our host communities while on our privileged excursions around the world are questions we all need to ask ourselves. Whether on a surf trip, or just a family vacation to Mazatlan over Christmas break, a lot of our collective choices are doing more harm than good unfortunately, but there are alternatives and better ways to interact and support your local hosts.

The wind is again howling. Mt Taranaki is shrouded by a dense cloud blanket. Christine has been packing up the van and making a couple mugs of tea, as I ramble on. We are heading back up the coast to northern Taranaki to WWOOF on another homestead/organic farm in Urenui for at least a few days. There is some swell on the horizon, and this area is, like most areas of New Zealand, known for producing beautiful wave formations off the point breaks and river mouths and reefs that are found around every bend in the road. And this road is named the “Surf Highway”. This time its on. New Zealand, start throwing up some of those gems. Please! Not that this is a trip centered around surfing or anything…

p.s. Got the van stuck again yesterday. Looking for surf in all the wrong places, tried to turn around at another dead end, and backed up into a little grassy ditch just big enough for our vans tires. The wet grass wouldn’t let our tires get a grip and we had to rely on the kindness of a neighbor to help tow us out with his Rav 4. Thanks Rodney! Sorry to wake you from your late night beer fest at 11am, but cheers for jumping at the chance to help us out and for offering us your shower too! No thanks to the man with one leg who didn’t have a phone and only offered us berations for “driving crazy” and other dickish advice. Get bent dude.

Waipare Homestead. Home sweet as home.

We’ve been staying at the Waipare Homestead for two weeks now. The house, tucked off the beach amongst Norfolk pine, Moreton Figs and copious kawa-kawa was built in the 1880’s out of Kauri wood – almost head to toe. Scrubbs bought this place two decades ago and he and his wife Louia have been hosting WWOOFers for 16 years. Within minutes I was deep into conversations on Miki Dora, Michael Peterson, and my Re-Thinking the Endless Summer theories. Scrubbs has been surfing since the early 1960’s and Louia, having grown up on the Mahia Peninsula – home to well known and well guarded waves, as well as being a Miki Dora hideout during the 1970’s, is a connoisseur of surf culture herself.

“Your doing you thesis on surf culture! Surf culture!” she exclaimed and giggled when I told them the purpose of my side of this New Zealand experience. “So you’re a bum! A good for nothing! Ha Ha! Come and help me dig a trench around Honey Lee’s tent outside. We need to keep her shit high and dry, right bro?”

The rain kept coming too. By morning, the roads where washed out all over the area. Some rising 6 meters or more above their normal flow lines. A giant plum tree went down near the orchard that first night, and by the following afternoon, Christine and I, along with the two other WWOOFers – one from Florida who had been here for two months, and another from Germany who had spent time here four years ago and had just dropped by the previous day to say hello –  were out in the intermittent downpours with chainsaws and branch wompers, hacking away at the felled debris.

The girls – Louia, her two daughters Honey Lee and Juliet, and Cassie, the Floridian WWOOFer all left for the AC/DC concert in Auckland a few days after Christine and I arrived. The two of us, along with Scrubbs, would spend the next several days locked into the dribbling beach break peaks out the back door and into conversations over the incredible history and perceptions that surfing has and has given to us. The mind altering lifestyle that becomes you, submerged in the ocean’s life lessons. Philosophy  and politics and the madness of the human condition and spirit were passed around the dinner table each night. We hooted and hollered at our own surf movie screenings held in the living room. A viewing of The Endless Summer brought many of my idea’s back into perspective, and we cringed and cracked up at Bruce Brown’s horribly off-color imperialist colonial comments about the “primitive” African’s that Mike Hynson and Robert August encountered during their search for the perfect wave. Thomas Campbell’s film ‘Sprout’ blew Scrubbs away with the embracing of boards long and short with abstract concaves, convexes and varied numbers of fins and his generally brilliant artistic representation of surf culture. We also worked around the yard, helping get the grounds ready for the next wedding being help here in a few weeks.

After a fun morning session the night after viewing Sprout, Scrubbs stoke meter about to burst, Christine and I had

Scrubbs, Crista and me. K. Beach

 laced up our boots and were heading out to attack the Plum tree after the three of us had just finished a potatoe and egg brunch. “I reckon the waves are still looking pretty good; probably time for another session.” He had just been down to the water to survey the scene. I started to say, “oh yeah? Christine and I were about to get on that tree again…” and was quickly cut off by a moment of hysteria from Scrubbs, “Fuck work man, the waves are better than this morning! Lets have another session! That other shit isn’t going anywhere! Priorities man!” So, when in Rome… Scrubbs also stoked us out with all his life long local knowledge of the area’s surf breaks. We took a ride up the hill for a surf check one morning, and based off the visual clues we could acquire from a vista where miles and miles of coast could be observed, he directed us to the right spot at the right time, and I finally scored some decent surf in New Zealand.

A few of our days this past week were also spent on a friend of Scrubbs vineyard, helping them prepare the vines for the nets to keep off the birds. The berries are filling with sugar, and we enjoyed the change of pace and hands on experience with the local wine culture. However, we are really in tune with the fact that New Zealand is in no way the ‘100% Pure’ landscape that the tourism board sells to the world. “That’s a fucking scam isn’t it,” Scrubbs quickly replied when asked about the slogan, and then raising concerns and giving examples of how polluted New Zealand has become. Choppers saturate the local squash and corn fields with chemicals on a regular basis; one of them swooping across the neighbor’s fields while we plucked new growth off the vines, causing both Christine and I to worry and wonder. “We were rained on with those little white pellets just the other day from a copter,” Louia mentioned during one of our conversations, “Fucking bastards.” One afternoon in Gisborne, we caught part of a documentary on the chemical 1080, which was playing on a sidewalked television outside a hippy store, which is used locally and a scary topic for biologists and environmentalists from around the world. The forestry practices have long been destroying the landscape too, and the cattle and sheep industry polluting the ground water supplies, with signs up in all the campgrounds and holiday parks warning people to boil their water before drinking.

Yesterday, we continued to plug away at the Plum tree, Christine going for an afternoon swim with Honey Lee and Juliet, me reading the through the stack of books on surf history and local folklore that Scrubbs had dug up for us. The sun has dried up the downpours and the road is waiting. Scrubbs and I hongi’ed and contact info was passed along to us. Surf bro’s done south that would love to show us around. Off toward the South Island. Off to track down Miki’s ghost.

P.S.

Consequently, I have a theory on Miki Dora’s reincarnation. Being the consummate recluse, staunch deplorer of crowds, surf mainstream-dom, and lover of this particular region of New Zealands North Island; I just might be on to something in believing that he has come back to us in the form of Moko – the people famed people friendly dolphin that has been cruising the Gisborne coastline for several years now. Possible retribution for the scams he pulled to live the search of finding those perfect empty waves. Could be worse…  Just a thought…

January 30, 2010:

A north east swell was suppose to come in today. I woke up a few times throughout the night to the sound of waves crumbling along the bouldered point and manic moments of rain and wind. My dreams were deep animated wave songs that curved and melted off the backs of my eyelids in deep reds and blues; no doubt feeding off of the aural songscape drifting in through the windows of our van.

 A cup of green tea and walk around the bend with the sunrise reveals no wave party. Swell lines rise and fall as the ocean tidal surges ebb and flow over shallow and deep contours near the shore. This swell just isn’t quite big enough, not at the right angle or just not in the mood to curl her turquoise top into a walled up face capable of inviting a wave rider onto the undulations of her cheeks and chin. The rain takes a break, but only for a moment, and Christine and I have a cup together and I move the van under the cover of a open aired – but roofed – dirt floored parking area attached to the vacated fishing club house. With camping chairs and books in hand, we read and wait out the rain, hoping that the rising tide will us bring us a gift.

In Leonard Lueras’s, Surfing: The Ultimate Pleasure, he points out that flat spells have long driven surfriders to frustrated lengths. He references a 19^th century Maui circuit court judge, Abraham Fornander, who authored, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origins and Migrations, which details a specific ancient Polynesian “surf coaxing ritual,” where distraught surfers with the help and guidance of a kahuna would whip the waters surface with strands of pōhuehue, or beach morning glory, until the waves returned. A chant would accompany this action. Translated, the pōhuehue chant reads:

Arise, arise you great surfs from Kahiki,

The powerful curling waves. Arise with the pōhuehue.

Well up, long raging surf.

Fornander, as Lueras describes, also documented chants of demigods intervening with oceanic quietude for the sake of discontented surfers.  Lueras writes,

A chant about Laenihi, a Hawaiian woman with celebrated mystical powers,

recalls how she forced winds to blow and caused “the sea to be aroused from

its calm repose.” This wave generating wind, called the Unulau (or trade wind),

did its mystical thing, and as the chant notes: “Early that morning the surf

began to roll in. When  the people rose from their sleep and saw the surf, they

all began to shout and yell.”

And with the stoke flowing through their bodies, they no doubt paddled out and had an epic session. Unfortunately, I know of no kahuna, and have no demigoddess to plead to. I have the stories though, and the meditations that they invoke, to help ease the ever so slight growth of anxiety over our inability to find a pocket of perfect, empty waves. So we sit and read, eat apples with peanut butter, drink tea and grow a bit nervous with the rain squalls. Eventually, we decide to drive out of Waipiro Bay, before the road washes out.

We know of a visitor’s center in Ruatoria, a one horse town off the main highway, a handful of kilometers north of Wapiro. There is internet access there and telephone, so we hope to make use of it to check the weather and make contact with WWOOF hosts. This is a good opportunity to initiate ourselves into the world of WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms. A perfect segue to introduce my core idea behind my “Rethinking the Endless Summer” thesis. With so many surfers travelling the globe, no doubt influenced by the photo’s and films that we all absorb from the multitude of resources available, I think that an unsustainable and irresponsible dominant travel paradigm has developed over the past 50 years.  Internet swell forecast tools, ever growing ‘surf camps’ developments in once pristine environments and wave-centric travel mentalities are strangling the soul of surf culture in my opinion, giving all of us a bad wrap in the wake of others laziness. So when Christine and I found out about the WWOOF program, which is a global network of farm hosts who allow travelers to volunteer their time in exchange for room and board, I thought it could be an interesting way to promote an alternative notion of surf travel. A way to spend the flat spells, to get local, to engage in cultural reciprocity and promote health, sustainability and to learn. In New Zealand, there are over 1000 hosts all over the country, many of which are spittin’ distance to a surf break.

The visitor’s center was all closed up though. We go across the street to Mijo’s Dairy to ask around about it opening today, and the woman behind the counter thinks for a moment and says a bit apologetically, “nah, probably go home for the weekend. What were you needing, the internet?” We told her we did, wanting to check the weather, see if this rain was coming to an end, to check the swell, get in touch with some people.

“Well, I guess if you just need it for a few minutes you can use our computer. Don’t think it would hurt anyone,” says the man now standing next to her.

Twenty minutes later Christine and I in the back room of John and Mihi’s dairy, eating fresh smoked kahawai with hot chocolate and talking about the world, the Pacific Northwest, Maori-dom, shearing sheep, the university and the love of not having to travel. John used to surf, has an old 9’3’’ back at the house, but his knees have given up on him. The rain continued to rain. Wasn’t suppose to stop for days. Mihi gifted Christine one of her hand knitted unspun wool sweaters. John told us to come back to carve some whale bone. They insisted that we call up their friends, Louia and Scrubbs in Anaura Bay, about an hour south of Ruatoria. They are long time WWOOF hosts, and real good people they told us. John said that Scrubbs was an old kiwi surfer with a cache boards and of knowledge and stories about this place, and Louia a Maori woman who organized fashion shows with the local kids, amongst other artsy endeavors.

John needed to get on with washing the outside walls – best done when the rains came because it saves water – so we leave for Anaura, cruise along Hwy 35, where the rivers and streams swell up and wash out the tar sealed road around this bend and below that dip. Our windshield wipers squeak across the glass in mad dashes, and the defrost struggles to keep our line of sight clear with all the humidity surrounding and emanating from us. Here we go…