Scrabble: 99. Ocean: 1

So the other day Ian and I decided to play Scrabble on the beach. We've been playing a lot of Scrabble here in New Zealand, because we are old. So the weather was really nice and we had time to kill so we headed to the beach in Whangamata and busted out the handy travel edition of Scrabble that Ian had. We started playing and it was a really crappy game. I'm talking words like "kit", "tan", etc. Nothing over one syllable, just total shit.

So we had noticed earlier that the tide seemed really high, and we placed our towel accordingly very high up on the beach, almost to the grass, thinking we'd be safe (I'm sure you can see where this is going). One wave seemed really close and I commented, "Hmm, maybe we should move further away", which went as unnoticed as most of my suggestions do to Ian. All of a sudden while pondering what word I can make with the letters Q, U, D, I, I, E, E, I turn to look at the ocean and HOLY SHIT THAT WAVE IS ON US. Being the quick thinker I am (and remember previous experiences), I grabbed the camera first while yelling at Ian to get up. He grabs Scrabble, I get my shoes and the towel, and we just barely make it to.......okay, we're soaking wet and Scrabble is covered in sand. Fuck.

It seemed like total disaster, but we managed to recover EVERY SCRABBLE LETTER except for one--a stupid I, which we really don't need anyway because there's 9 of them I think, and that gets a little excessive (especially when you get ALL of them in the game, which seems to happen to me quite a lot). It took quite a bit of foraging through the sand and wading through the tide, but our Scrabble game is mostly intact.

Not the type to be deterred by mere water, and thinking, "That was a totally shite game anyways", we decided to start again. I made some silly comment about how the ocean may have won the battle and gained one letter, but it has not yet won the war. Right after I said this, we picked our seven letters, and what does Ian get? TIDE ONE. I shit you not, my friends. The ocean was fucking laughing at us. Jerk.



So, anyways. Other than fighting with the ocean, mistaking lighthouses for UFOs, climbing lots of rocks, doing belly flops into the sand, squashing moths, etc, we've been spending lots of time on beaches over the last couple weeks. After leaving Dharma Gaia, we did a quick 2 day hike to the top of Coromandel Peninsula during which we scared a lot of cows and avoided a lot of poop, got harrassed by ducks, and saw some dolphins in the ocean. On the 3.5 hr hike back it was pouring and we both got soaked, so we decided to stay in a hostel that night. Good thing to, because Ian ended up getting really sick and throwing up all night. But don't worry, he recovered, and we're vaguely certain that it wasn't a case of swine flu. We spent the rest of the time going along the East coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. We spent about 4 days in the tiny coastal town of Hahei, and did some swimming, surfing, boat riding, sunbathing, and also went to Hot Water Beach, where you can dig a hole in the sand and find a thermal pool. That was pretty rad.

Now, we're back in Auckland (ugh) for this night and the next, and we take off for Great Barrier Island on Friday to our next WWOOFing job. It's at a backpackers lodge and Irish pub, and we do garden work for a couple hours in the morning and then wash dishes for a couple hours in the night. It should be sweet, and GBI sounds fantastic. And after that...who knows. :D