Saturday, 11/08/2012 - 57 A.D.
Not a great deal happened today. We went and saw some falls a short drive from the campsite, but I think I’ve come to have my fill of waterfalls (not that these weren’t extremely impressive). Most of our time was spent trying to find a replacement internal hard drive for Laptop #1 – not an off the shelf item. It involved us running around Taupo trying to find some wi-fi to find suitable computer stockists and then find a public telephone to call them from. Obviously we were hanging around longer than we wanted to. Between Rotorua and Taupo I was starting to think there was an evil circle of energy that sucked people in and prevented them from leaving, like the Bermuda triangle. Either that or we’d accidentally parked-up overnight on a Maori burial ground and were paying the price for it. To cut a long story short, we arranged to have one ordered in to a stockist down in Wellington, hopefully arriving by Tuesday.
On the way back through town to where we'd parked, we met Kate from Southport coming across the road. Some legend or other states that if you meet someone once it is by chance, twice is a coincidence and three times means Fate is trying to tell you something profound through the interaction with this person. As this was only the second occasion, we didn't bother taking her for a drink or chatting any longer than in passing. It was a drizzly day, hence why she wasn't working, but she was still getting paid (unlike poor old Chunkz).
The Taupo Hole In One Challenge had set up near our parking space and Tim couldn't resist buying 20 balls to have a crack at that magic hole. Apparently there had been 823 holes in one since it began and, although he came close, Tim didn't make it 824.
Tonight we are parked up in the Kaimanawa Forest Park. A little further down the road we met a hunter with his dog getting tooled up to go and shoot some deer. I don’t think he found any because it was only an hour until nightfall and he left shortly after dusk. That was a good thing because isolation isn’t as much fun when you’re less than a mile away from other people.
An aside - there is a tradition in Scotland that people driving motorhomes wave at each other and I tried to continue it here. After getting my 17th wave blanked, I gave up. Tim waved at a lorry driver by mistake.
And to flesh out the rest of this post, let me introduce you to another member of our travelling family:
Yep, it’s the “Porter Potty”! Get a good close up of it:
By keeping this bad boy on board we can pass our vehicle off as being totally self-contained, even though in reality we spend most of our time visiting the bushes. But you never know, it’s often raining heavily outside and sometimes you just gotta, gotta go…
Sunday, 12/08/2012 - 58 A.D.
Another pretty doldrum-like day, it has to be said. We woke up in our national park paradise to raindrops on the top of the van and, bar a couple of hours from late afternoon to early evening, it did not stop raining all frickin` day. It reminded me what it felt like to be English. Or a north islander in the wet season. I forgot to mention that Thursday and Friday were the first two days in which we didn’t experience a single drop of precipitation. It’s back to business as usual now though!
Today we arrived in the rather un-New Zealand-sounding town of Palmerston North. Not much more to report than that, I’m afraid. We had a look around the shops, but didn’t find much, what with it being Sunday. Oh, that’s not true – we both bought another warm top from the clearance stand outside K-mart. I was extremely concerned that they zipped up on the incorrect side, but Tim pointed out that the label had “mens” printed upon it. Must be an American thing. Not sure if it was the fault of the drizzle, but the war memorial in the square in the centre of town had a distinctly Soviet feel to it. Probably looks loads better in summer…
…As do the campsites, I imagine. It’s a little creepy wandering through the kitchens and TV rooms on your own while out of season. It’s like being in a ghost town. You know that a few months ago these rooms were full of happy, whooping families enjoying their summer breaks, and you know that in a few months time they will be again, but for now they're empty, save for an English guy who’s waiting for his laundry to finish. In fact, the dryer in this place was pretty pathetic and when I pulled my full load out most of the garments were still damp. The machine only took two dollar coins, Tim and I were out of `em and the office had closed up for evening. Normally there’s a heater in the TV room in these sites, but not here. So what did I do to finish off drying my clothes? Chucked `em in the oven, of course.
It just about did the job, though I pity the next person to use it (though as mentioned earlier it probably won’t be for a couple of months). And there was only the odd slightly-burnt sock as I lingered too long watching Family Guy in the next room. The things one will do for clean clothes when one is on The Road…probably won’t bother washing them next time...too much hassle.
And civilisation will duly crumble.
Monday, 13/08/2012 - 59 A.D.
The drizzly town of Palmerston North held no further surprises for us, so we headed off after going through the usual morning motions. Our next main port of call was Wellington – end of the line for the north island – but I’d spotted something on the map along the west coast that I thought might be worth checking out. In the mid 1800s a Scottish ship called The Hydrabad was wrecked off Waitarere beach. It was listed in the road atlas with the white star on blue background that signified a site of interest, so we made our way down to the sleepy resort and hit the beach. It was a lovely day for a walk along the sands, but alas not a good day for spotting shipwrecks. Besides lots of driftwood, this is all that we saw…
It’s out there somewhere! Southport beach is meant to have about seven shipwrecks and I haven’t seen any of those either. Guess I should just have been thankful for the good weather after yesterday’s rant about the constant rain! Walking back along the eerie deserted streets of Waitarere was a bit like being in “Banjoland”, but I didn’t see any kids with three nostrils holding musical instruments. Just Tim.
“Fy, fy, my bit of driftwood is bigger than yours!”
“That’s a tree, mate.”
After lunch we pootled further down the western coast and pulled up for a wander around Pukerua Bay, which in Maori means “Broken Microwave”. We saw a sign saying that blue penguins nested in the area, so keep dogs on leads, don’t do polar bear impressions, etc., etc. I really wanted to spot some, and at one point we thought we had, but they just turned out to be boring birds of the kind that fly. Maybe we’ll have more luck seeing some of the little waddlers down on the south island.
[James contemplates the theory that energy is never used up, only recycled, and that time is cyclical rather than linear, therefore meaning that potentially he has lived this moment already as himself in another lifetime. And whether that funny-shaped rock is actually a penguin.]
Yep, in light of not a great deal new going on, it was definitely a day for posing, and Prometheus was standing right around the corner on the next rock…
When the days are sunny like this the only downer is that they don’t last very long. Come 18:00 it’s pitch black, so we had to leave the beach to play Let’s-Park-Up-Somewhere-We’re-Not-Supposed-To-For-The-Night. We were already very close to Wellington, but didn’t want to go into the city limits just yet, so we hopped over the nearby town of Lower Hutt and skirted around the edge of the Rimutaka Forest Park.
The New Zealand government understands that regular campsites can be quite expensive, at least during peak season, and that some people want to go a bit more off the beaten track. Their big thing at the moment is creating DOC (Department Of Conservation) campsites in more remote locations. These are not staffed, but are visited at regular intervals by the rangers. The facilities vary from hot showers, kitchens, etc., to being nothing but a field and a toilet (which may well be nothing but a hole in the ground). You’re expected to turn up and self-register yourself, dropping off your fee for staying overnight in the box provided, which Ranger Ned collects when he next passes through.
As you may have guessed, Tim and I prefer to stay in a decent campsite one night, then camp out in isolation in the bush the next. DOC campsites are somewhere in the middle and we’ve avoided them so far, but by the time we pulled up at Catchpool Valley Campground it was close to dusk and we’d exhausted most of our options for a quiet spot in the area. Therefore we decided to bite the bullet and park up here. We are, naturally, the only people here to “enjoy” the facilities.
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