Damn I love Dolphins. What would I come back as? Dolphins rate pretty highly.

They can certainly surf better than me too…

I have dived with them a few times but pods riding the surf and catching air is something pretty special…

A few more photos here.

Its been a while since I updated…

So we moved to Manly and are getting set up in our new flat 5 minutes from the beach.

A bit of scavenging, some cheap deals and a lot of lugging heavy objects around resulted in us furnishing our whole flat – bed, 2 sofas, 2 TV’s, entire kitchen, tables, chairs, etc – for about $200…

8 phone calls later and we still dont have internet yet due to some serious uselessness on the part of our internet provider…ggggrrrr

Dont get me started on that but needless to say that having to go to check email and do uploading from an internet cafe is not much fun…

Been watching a lot of surfing as the swell has been pretty big in the last couple of weeks.

Bought a new surfboard and am gradually getting the basics whilest trying not to drown myself…

Work is slow but steadily picking up pace…

Flo is commuting in to the city by ferry for work in the CBD each day…early starts (5.30am) are harsh but she is back in Manly by 3.30pm and gets to enjoy the rest of the day.

Elsewhere, Banksy has made a movie… be keen to see that.

In the wider world, Sovereign debt seems to be giving everyone a kick in the nuts. More carnage of this nature is gonna spread particularly across Europe and, along with more bailouts (under different names) this seems likely to be the trend for the next year…

Looking forward to watching the Olympics, although Shaun White seems like a shoe in providing his head doesnt fall off again…

Hope they get it sorted cos El Nino is causing problems again, just like it did last time I was in Whistler….

Meanwhile, the weather here is sunny and hot, hot, hot, other than the occasional thunderstorm…and life is good.

Remembered to take my camera to the beach the other day so here are a few surf shots…definitely in need of a better zoom though to improve these…

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I got up and put on shorts and a T-shirt this morning, then surfed for a few hours, ate lunch on a restaurant deck overlooking a beautiful lagoon in the sweltering sun, had a siesta, had another surf, and then later watched about 10 multi coloured Lorikeets taking bread out of peoples hands before we sat down to a huge Indian takeaway in the balmy evening with everyone on the deck of the house where we are staying.

Then I had a look on the internet and found this amazing photo which reminded me (as if I had forgotten) why I’m happy not to be living in the UK…

Beautiful they may be, but I am definitely over snowy winters right now….

The new plan for the next year:

Finish my 12 months of mini semi retirement (well I mean why wait til you’re 65?) by traveling for a month, getting married and then moving to Sydney, getting a decent job and getting much better at surfing and surf photography, among many other things….

Looking forward to living by the ocean again.

Some inspiration:

More here

Two kite surfers from West Sussex took advantage of strong winds on the south coast of England to jump over Worthing pier…

The South Pacific is a part of the world I have always wanted to visit, and will definitely be doing so in the not too distant future. Before leaving the UK, I watched the first 2 episodes of a great series on the whole South Pacific region, and through the luxury of torrents have been catching up on the rest of the episodes here (BBC Iplayer still hasnt gone international and I havent yet found a way to fool the site in to thinking I am in the UK)
The narrator went to my school too…(yea I know, typical middle England accent…)

Below is an incredible clip from episode 1, well worth downloading the whole thing if you like the look of it…

Another great bit of filming from an earlier BBC documentary:

We got a little fed up with the cold and total lack of insulation in our house so we drove a couple of hours over the mountains to Haast. As you come down out of the mountains it’s like coming in to a new country, with palm trees and a tropical feel to it (including a temperature about 20 degrees warmer than Wanaka) We came out on a huge beach about 15 miles long, with absolutely no one on it at all…epic. There was massive rolling surf, huge oldgrowth trees with the beach covered in knarled piles of bleached drift wood…It was sooo good to wander down the warm beach in bare feet after the freezing temperatures in Wanaka…

I feel very humbled in this place. It has an ancient and weathered feel that I’ve not come across anywhere else, and with all the turmoil going on in the world, it feels a very long way away from it all.

However, with many, many different problems clearly on the horizon I have to doubt that anywhere is really safe from it all…..

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