This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)
A surf trip to New Zealand — usually the thought conjures up images of long days at Raglan, epic water hues at Piha and good times on the road with a few mates.
This is all well and good if you’re just tripping around the North Island — but things get decidedly more rugged and remote when you decide to jump the Cook Strait and land on the South Island, as Albee Layer, Kain Daly and Hank Gaskell recently discovered.
“It’s almost like a different world down there,” said Albee Layer, who’s spent the last few months doing anything he can to land somewhere different. “I’d been to New Zealand before, but never to the South Island.” Empty lineups, happy humans — that’s the kind of stuff that makes surf tripping great. But there’s always a catch. Because of its off-the-beaten-path location, scoring epic surf on the South Island takes work. A lot of work. Plus, the seals are very aggressive. Watch and learn.