Friday, April 3: Sunny to begin with, clouding over but still warm

Wainui

I was first up and through with cooking my breakfast before Christine and Alexander needed all of the available space to get their stuff together (and then they forgot their food in the food bin and a can of coke on the fridge, and had to come back and pick it up). I went on to process yesterday’s pictures and secure them on the hard disk, and then there was clarification of the partial/full eclipse of the moon story, with timeanddate.com (which claimed yesterday that the eclipse would only be partial, and me wondering whether a full eclipse in the northern hemisphere might only appear partial if you were far south enough, or vice versa) now claiming that the eclipse will be full in Auckland as well, which solved that problem.

Had to get the arrival details sorted out, but the password at bahn.de had to be reset. Some strange trains that morning that can’t be booked (time ran out?) any longer, but they would have taken a couple of hours extra. I will try to get the train around 8:30, but later would also be OK. Now to confirm the flight. Armed with the itinerary I went downtown but there was no one at MH answering the phone so I had a look around town instead. The two Four Square supermarkets were open (but not selling any booze), and people were crossing the bay on the passenger ferry and generally moving about. After my lack of success with MH I took off up the hill, first to the one road that led to a beach, but not much in the way of organised parking, then up the very steep hill to the sundial and flagstaff where I took the two main brackets of the day. Went back into town to look for souvenirs, and what things cost in which supermarket, then it was down the road to Okiato to have a brief look at where New Zealand’s first capital once stood, then down to the end of the road here for a short stroll along the rocky and shelly beach to an island reserve (but not much for a sunset).

Back here set the camera up with motion detection to try to catch the fantail that I’ve seen flitting about, and had a bit of a nap to compensate for last night’s marathon session. A Japanese couple, though not really a couple, Nissi and Chisato, have arrived in the meantime and it’s about time to go back into town for pizza & see about shooting the sunset.

Dinner was a “Doodle Do” pizza (chicken, bacon, red onion, bbq sauce) at Hone’s for $22. Very thin crust and crispy & warm right up to the end, even though I was sitting in the cooler beer garden, rather than inside. Sunset didn’t promise much, so I returned here to try to get some thoughts sorted for the last days.