Saturday, February 14: A little cloudy to begin with, but then sunny with some mountain clouds

Sue and Simon’s (airbnb, $90)

Early rising was no word for it. I had wanted to be up at 6:45 but was already awake at 6:30 so went and showered, then had a coffee, toasted a danish or whatever it was that Chinara had left for me on a plate on the kitchen table. Then it was time to try to get the case to close, and by 7:25 I was ready to go. Said goodbye to Chinara through the bedroom door. Have left a small cache of books behind in one of the drawers, so will have to remember to pick them up on the 27th.

Was at the bus stop in good time and could see from the timetable that there would have been a problem taking even one bus later (7:50) than envisaged (7:40) because it was delayed by a quarter of an hour, and because of the unusual intervals in the timetable, a later bus – even if it was on time – would have been touch-and-go for the long distance bus.

Downtown the short walk to the Sky City bus terminal behind me, I sat down to start writing yesterday’s journal entry while keeping an eye out for someone along the lines of Pea. And suddenly she was there, very much fitting the few pictures of her that I had seen on facebook. Got some tags for her bags, then with some delay the bus arrived and we were on it, seated right up front, so that Pea could do some sightseeing. Wow, what a blind date! She is quite a handful, but I don’t think we’ll have any problem getting her into – and out of – the kayak. Just a little above average. Her main job is teaching small children, and her passion is singing, her dream was coming to New Zealand and embarking on adventure. Well, adventure she shall have! We spent most of the first couple of hours chewing each other’s ears off.

How had this come about? Well, for the last couple of months I have posted on two forums, Neuseelandhaus and Tramping NZ, among others, for partners for the Whanganui River Journey and the Tongariro Northern Circuit. Not much in the way of helpful responses until about two weeks ago. Then there was a message to look at my “other” messages on facebook, and there was this woman who was offering to take me up on the Whanganui. I had offered to take even a novice at kayaking on the trip in a last ditch attempt at getting anyone at all. In a double kayak that should be possible, I reasoned, and in that we could sail down the river without necessarily trying to team up with anyone else. The only thing was that Pea reported for duty two days before she herself left for Auckland. A wild flurry of emails, facebook chat messages, and skype chat followed. I also had to check that she was for real, who knows who might show up on the internet. As long as she didn’t ask me to transport an unknown package to Auckland for her, I reasoned, there was a good chance she was real, and finally we were on a bus together.

After a while we were through the south of Auckland, and in Bombay the driver couldn’t get the reverse gear of the bus to engage and had to reroute accordingly. The most urgent problem was a truck in front of us to begin with, and the driver simply had to wait until it drove away. In any case, we were able to observe all the fine details, because we were sitting right up front.

Brief stop in Hamilton, then a longer stop in Taumarunui, which we took to go out and get something to eat (Pea had just chips, and I had a full Kiwi burger with string fries, which was possibly too much). It was almost just about too long for the whole procedure, because we only just made it back to the bus at departure time, and the last hour of the journey.

Simon was waiting for us and offered to take Pea along as well, so we were soon off up the hill. Also on offer was a bike (and helmet), and the hostel had the corresponding equipment for Pea as well, so we met at the corner where the Powderhorn is, and cycled into town for some shopping. For Pea it was the first time wearing a helmet, so I took a photo of her. After that we agreed to go out to the Powderhorn to eat. My choice of potato wedges with bacon, cheese and sour cream as a snack for $12 was overpowering (especially after the burger lunch), and I barely made a dent in it, Pea’s choice of corn chips with spicy avocado and jalapeño dip for $6.5 and a side of beans for $8 seemed more doable. We had the spuds bundled up to take away. Will have to come back here when hunger strikes.

It was getting late after a long day, and we adjourned with the resolution to convene a grand council on the morrow.