The following short tales are true stories from my time on Great Barrier Island, New Zealand.
Belly Dancing at the Pub
On Tuesday morning while cleaning around the Pub, Nina began to discuss the possibilities of performing some night. You see, Fanina (Nina) is a professional belly dancer. She is one of the most talented dancers I have ever met, and I have even performed with the American Ballet Theater at the Detroit Opera House.
She decided that Wednesday had to be the night! You see, Justin and I departed from Great Barrier Island Thursday afternoon. She wanted to make sure she utilized Justin’s percussion abilities on the large bongo drums in the pub. Yes, it’s strange, Irish Pub with bongo drums? But it’s New Zealand!
Nina soon discovered my vocal abilities and asked me to sing Arabic (something new to me) and be a part of the evening entertainment.
What an awesome night! The locals on the Barrier had never even dreamed of the cultural experience they were able to enjoy. Justin, hit that drum! And now I’ll sing in Arabic any time a belly dancer asks. And Nina, girl, you shake it.
What is a Kina? YES THIS IS WORTH READING
One day, Justin and I headed out to walk along Medlands Beach (the place where all the surfers talk about). Steve, the local who was giving us a lift suggested that it would be more enjoyable for us if he dropped us of at Kaitoke Beach. He told us that Kaitoke and Medlands are connected by an easy to find sandy path and this would allow us to spend more time walking on the beach. We were hooked. The problem started when we got to the end of Kaitoke Beach. Where was the path to Medlands? We were not able to find a nice sandy path but I did discover a number of rocky cliffs that lead out into the water and off in the direction of Medlands. I was feeling especially adventurous and I convinced Justin it would not be too dangerous. We hiked and climbed along the dangerous rock ledges that were exposed by the outgoing tide. All was going well until Justin 
I was in serious pain as I scrambled back to the safety of the rock cliffs. When I reached Justin, I sat down and howled and cried. This phase lasted several minutes. Recognizing that I was not able to walk either back the way I had come or forward, I began the process of removing the most painful spikes from the bottom of my foot. This was painful and led to another series of crying sessions. Luckily, I had scooped up a sea shell on Kaitoke beach and was able to use this as a tool to remove spikes. Although I was not able to remove all of the spikes, I pulled enough of those painful little jerks out of my foot to allow me to walk (or hobble) along. Justin and I quickly realized that we would not be able to reach Medlands with my injured foot: so we started climbing up. We were able to scrambled 3/4’s of the way up the cliff but we were then forced, due to the sheerness of the cliff face, to scale the remaining quarter. No problem right. Justin and I are both experienced climbers and this did not appear to be a very difficult climb.
Ignoring Justin’s warnings about caution, I began climbing quickly up the face of the cliff: eager to remove the remaining painful spikes from my right foot. I climbed up several holds and was hanging with my body attached to the rock face. I reached my right hand upward for the next hold and pulled down firmly while kicking up with my right foot. Suddenly, my handheld gave way and a basketball sized rock fell on my head. I was not having a good day. I quickly scaled back down the cliff and, together with Justin re-examined the situation. We eventually decided on a route and carefully climbed the last quarter of the cliff. In truth, this was not all that smart as the rocks were not stable and few of our hand holds were actually solid. But eh, that is why we travel with World Nomads right?
To sum up this rambling story, we got to the top of the cliff and waded half a mile through tall grass until we found a road. Along the way, to add insult to injury, I stepped in a half petrified pile of cow crap. With my injured right foot. I was pissed. On the road, Craig (a local surfer and a regular at the pub) picked us up, took one look at my foot and told me I needed to go the Medical Center. Direct quote, “Ewww nasty kina, that’s gonna go septic, gonna have to go to the med center.” Apparently, Kina spikes have barbs that often detach deep in the flesh of it’s unsuspecting victim. If left in, this would cause my foot to swell up to the point where I would be forced to limp everywhere. Thus, as the locals say, septic. We made it to the Medical Center where the doctor spent 1.5 hours digging around in my foot with a blunt instrument. Eventually, he had to give me local anesthetic to get all of the barbs out of my foot.
One of the only highlights from this experience was Majtejn (pronounced Ma-Teen), another local surfer who is a regular at the pub and is dating the chef. He volunteered to take us to the Medical Center, when Craig pulled up with Justin and I to where the surfers were getting ready to hit the surf. Plus, he waited the whole 1.5 hours for us to be done and drove us back to the pub. What a nice guy. Sarah, the chef, is now dating the local hero.
Can’t touch this!
Within one hour of removing the bandage, a Kiwi named Eliza Jones and I went swimming with the dolphins. It was awesome! Six of us were playing Frisbee. I know, laugh it up! The Frisbee was our dinner plate many evenings in Europe, I had to step on a Kina to save it and now we were playing with this ultimate Frisbee.
Suddenly, we became distracted by dolphins jumping in the water nearby. Eliza Jones and I were the only 2 brave enough to jump in the freezing cold water. We swam about 200 yards out to the area where the dolphins were playing. I sang songs under the water and splashed like a Titanic survivor to attract them. It 
