Adventures Within:
Surf Safaris
But this black sand beach does have these things (although the suits are made of rubber and the only deposits in banks are sand).
Surfing has become quite a money spinner in tourism and real estate terms—and one company riding this wave is Adventures Within.
Operating for the last 15 years and offering general adventure activities, Adventures Within has recently branched into surfing.
The company runs surf coaching day trips out of Auckland to the west coast, and, when the conditions are right, to the east.
They also do longer 'surfaris'—to Raglan, for example, and the Coromandel, where your accommodation is a simple covering of canvas and the evening's entertainment consists of campfire tales about the day's wave-riding. Clients include school groups, backpackers and adventurous adults.
Andy Kilgallon is the boss of Adventures Within's surfing operations. With an enviable board-riding CV that has seen him in such far-flung places as
Indonesia, Europe and Southern Thailand, he originally hails from Ireland.
But, New Zealand's great waves, beautiful scenery and the low number of surfers in the water has drawn him to, and kept him, in this country.
“The key idea of Adventures Within has always been to bring people to do things they've never done, in places they might not normally go to,” says Andy. “Surfing is a natural part of that.”
A day trip is the entry-level option and the destination will be often be Piha.
Safety comes first, says Andy—there's training on the beach including learning hand signals and how to avoid, or get out of, Piha’s notorious rips.
The boards are soft-tops with plastic fins which won't cut you. And, after learning how to “pop up” on them, it's time to paddle out. One instructor to five learners means that, by the end of the day, 98 per cent of people will be standing.
And some, if the conditions are right, will even be catching clean waves as they break 'out back’—the hallowed area where you get to ride along the line of a peeling wave, turning and carving.