A Boat Yard in New England...

Mother Nature and I headed to Plymouth Mass to hang on the water for a few months at the beginning of the summer. 

Working back at Surf Marine with the friends. Planning to make a bunch of mods in preparation for a great summer. Had some squirrel friends coming on the bus quite a bit while we were at the boat yard.

Boat Yard Bus Tattoo..

Mother Nature

Andrea came up to spend some time in New England. Bus life at a boat yard for the beginning of this summer. So nice to come home to the bus and just lay in my bed. So stoked to have this bus and be able to share that with The Mother Nature 

Bus Needs some paint.....

Goodbye New Zealand

    Our last night in New Zealand was overwhelming with so many different emotions. Thankful for all of the amazing things that we were able to see and experience, but most of all thankful for all of the people that we were able to spend time with. We met so many great people that took care of us and looked out for us the entire time we were down there, so eager to share their lives with us.
   A bunch of our friends from Queenstown flew to Auckland on our last day. We just spent the night sitting around, sharing stories, laughing, getting tattoos, whatever. The perfect way to set off on our next journey....

 
Beak Business..

Pasta La Vista New Zealand. Thank you for lifting my eye lllids.

Our last day in NZ was spent in the presence of our brother from another....galaxy, Arie. He illegally drove to The WAZ compound in a crap box mini car with his bike and gigantic radio. Stuffed Me and Bubba in there with our bikes(don't know how it all fit with that radio) and brought us to a full pipe.
   We taped flashlights to our heads, pointed the radio into the tube, and started carving.

Your legs gave up before the pipe did. and you could hear the tunes forever. Love riding this stuff.

Thoughts of Nick Ferreira..

Ode to Stella

Stella was just flawless our whole trip; No problems other than a bad radio.  When we got back to Auckland for our last few days in NZ. I had run out of money. Out out. Bubba fronted me a few bucks until we could sell the car.  We took Stella back to the auction where we bought it and tried to sell it. we had no luck and with only 2 days left, it was getting tight. Ended up selling it to a kid from Massachusetts on Craigslist for $1000 bucks. An awesome deal for everyone and Stella rages on. 

Our friend Cameron said that he saw Stella driving down the street in Queenstown a month or so after we left. He chased them down and was like "where did you get this car". Funny to think we were down there in it, the people before us were down there with it, and the people after us will be down there with it. Rock on Stella.

The New Zealand Bush Hike Experience

 When we got asked to go on a Bush hike " New Zealand style" on one of our last few days in the southern hemisphere, we knew to expect a good adventure. Turned out to be one of the most memorable hikes I've ever done.

We parked our cars at a beach, jumped in the back of a pick up truck, drove to the top of this big hill,  hiked into the woods for a half hour or so until we came to a river crossing.. Took a right and started off down the river.

   After a few minutes of walking down the knee deep river, we got to our first waterfall. Jump off, swim 20 feet and you're looking down your next one.

took us over 6 hours to walk down that river....there were some really sketchy sections with water falls you couldn't jump off.. everyone helped each other out the whole time

 and some really high falls. we stopped on the top of one water fall and had some lunch for a bit.

Thank you for this awesome memory.

Skateparks in New Zealand

Thank you New Zealand for all of the skateparks you blessed our trip with. We rode some of the weirdest, prettiest, smallest, most unique, empty, packed, sketchiest... skateparks we've been fortunate enough to pump around.

Bar-B-Que Mastah George

Made it back to Auckland. Cool to spend a few weeks there when we first arrived in NZ, then hit the road for a few months, and then end the trip back in Auckland for our final week. All the dudes welcomed us back with a bar b que of grand proportions.

Felt good to be back and blink for a second. We went out to the trails, I cased the second jump and took a bad slam. I felt Bubbas pain, seeing him spend almost this whole trip with his body all bruised up; now it was my turn to take a few days of minimal movement. 

Caleb Table

Bubba relaxing in an empty bowl

Auckland
Rules.

Slow cruise back to Auckland Raglan 2

After leaving New Plymouth, We started driving up the coast to try and hit up a few more surf spots along the way. Ended up in Raglan again, but for a few days this time around. Bubba with a really nice tent for the night. Stella in the background. I slept in the tree behind her.
 
  Had a good old time in that town. Ate fruit and pies, I paddled out in the biggest waves i have ever been out in.. didn't catch any or plan on trying to, just felt great to feel all the energy behind ocean.

Finally rode the Alligator we found in the bushes in Nelson.

Mt. Taranaki

Mt. Taranaki was awesome. We slept at a beautiful spot in the town at the bottom of the Mountain, Drove to the bottom of the mountain in the morning and started the walk to the top. The first half of the hike was a breeze... on an access road to a hut. Then it started to get a bit more challenging...

Clouds started rolling in, and as we got higher, the visibility got awful. If there were a visible trail to follow it would have been no sweat, but because the ground was all Scree (loose small rocks), the only way to tell if you are going the right way up is the sticks they put sticking out of the ground every 50 feet or so. We started to get a little cautious and wondering if we should continue on, when we walked up on 2 guys sitting on some rocks doing the same thing.
  Bubba was ready for the turn around. He could see the danger in trying to continue on a blind path of slippery marble rocks in clouds with maybe 10 feet of visibility. I was nervous but wanted to keep going. When we got to the other dudes, one of them was trying to convince the other to turn around and head down. It worked out perfectly, Bubba and the one guy took the walk back down to the hut and myself and the other guy kept on our way up.
  It turned out to be a really fun, really dangerous hike up to the top. And although the clouds never cleared enough for us to see all the way down to the ground from the top, It did clear up enough for us to be in clear skies above the clouds for a few minutes. A serious Rock and Roll mission of bad assery.

New Zealands Surf Highway

New Zealand has a Highway deemed "surf highway". The shit load of surf breaks that are scattered out along the coastal highway, are all marked with nice signs. The towns are all small surf towns and With Coast line on one side and The Pointy Volcano, Mount. Taranaki on the other, we were really looking forward to this part of our trip. We slept at an incredible bowl just at the start of the highway. Woke up to a, no run taking, no surf surfing, wind. Howling and flapping our tents even in the bottom of the bowl.

     
    One of the best things and worst things about surfing, is the lack of control you have over the surf itself. It teaches you to be patient and appreciate it when you have it good, and not get upset when its shitty. We had both been looking forward to this part of the trip and had planned to spend days riding as many different breaks as our skills could handle, and here we are with more spots to hit in a hundred mile stretch, then we might ever have, And none will have surf able conditions for the next few days.

We stopped at a bunch of different breaks all along our drive, and although there wasn't any surf, we were just stoked to be there anyway. No complaints of our surf highway dreams blown away in the wind. We did get some fun surf in New Plymouth though....

Locals

The towns in the North Island aren't filled with tourists..I mean, they are, but its not as bad as Queenstown. There, we out numbered the population of actual locals, probably 5 to 1. Every small town that we went to, we met people and spent some time with them in some way or another.

The kindness of the locals was the best part of the trip for me.  We had stopped at this skatepark for a quick little session to break up the drive. We ended up meeting a couple of guys at the park, they invited us back to their house, one of them rapped for us, the other one went outside and came back in the house with a few branches he cut off of some weed plants he had in his back yard.. haha. People were just eager to do whatever they thought would make our trip better. ...... Even if we didn't smoke weed.

 We dried the plants on the dashboard while we surfed and smoked a joint in their honor.

Most of the skateparks have zip lines too..

To the North

Got the Ferry out of the South Island, just in time to watch a beautiful Sunset over the Queen Charlotte Range.

 Taking the ferry, it seemed like the start of another Chapter in our journey. The South Island was now behind us and the New Plymouth Surf Highway was all we wanted.

The Northern Part of the Southern Island

The Able Tasman National Park is a Coastal Hot spot for Tourists. If you are a German, You probably had your cabins booked months before your plane touched down. Didnt seem like many out of country'ers passed it by without giving it a look. We got up there with the Herd to see what it had to offer. Motueka was a small town, which seemed to have more tourists bouncing around the streets than there were locals.

Spelunking

    The rain was pouring down outside, so we decided to take a little cave tour. The caves had a weird erie feeling with all the water dripping down everywhere. Just strange knowing how bad the rain is pouring down above you, and you're just in a natural hole 10 feet below. Always been a little scared of tight caves.