Relaxing in Raglan
A small, funky surf town on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island
RIDING on the Sky Waka at Whakapapa in the central North Island, I was getting quite frozen by mountain mist and temperatures of two or three degrees below zero.
So, it was a relief to find that the next place I went, the surf town of Raglan, was a lot warmer.
Raglan is on the west coast of the North Island, west of Hamilton (Kirikiriroa) and near the eroded volcanoes called Pirongia and Karioi, of which the latter commands a really good view out over the Tasman Sea.
At least when the weather is fine, at any rate.
Like much of the west coast of New Zealand, Raglan has stormy black-sand beaches, popular with surfers who take advantage of waves whipped up by the westerly winds that blow over the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere in our latitudes, around and around Antarctica, with comparatively little interruption from the land. When I was there, the cinema…
