Saturday, February 21: Cloudy at first, with some brief & light showers in the afternoon, clearing by evening. Still warm
Sue & Simon’s
Time to sleep in this morning – at least until 8:30. Simon was already up baking bread. After breakfast he offered me the use of his jeep and I went across to see how Pea was doing. She had survived decompression and was getting ready for the next adventure. I introduced myself as her chauffeur and had to explain why.
At about 11:00 drove around to her place to pick her up – too early for the bus, but I had been told that Roger & Jackie were in town having breakfast so I thought we might track them down as a final diversion before she left at 12:50.
First of all it was down to town to see if we could spot them on the way, then out to their hotel, The Tussock Grove, which is run by Roger’s cousin. They weren’t back yet, so we went back into town, planning to comb through all of the cafés until they were found. Parked the car in the 10-minute bay at the i-site for way more than 10 minutes, because although Pea went to the i-site to look for something, I found the two in the Utopia across the road almost immediately. They had a rather nice sequence of the two of us shooting a rapid, and I think that will be incorporated somewhere into a video.
We were out just before the bus, Pea on the wrong side of the street, but soon she was with us, and there were plenty of hugs for farewells. We stayed until her bus took her off into the distance. There was a pie for lunch from Clyde Street Bakery – steak & cheese – very tasty and meaty for $5. Then for me it was back to Sue and Simon’s to try to salvage the image department of the journey.
I was surprised that the “A” card had so many apparently usable sequences on it. OK, the sideways sequence may be difficult to put together, but otherwise there are at least two complete forward sequences, one sunset at Poukaria – and against all hope – the sunset at Whakahoro and the mist-shrouded sunrise at the same place. This will make a good 10 minute sequence at least.
Wrote to the DOC offering a $100 reward for recovery of the camera and the bag, one last chance. Then the blog had to be transcribed for day 2 and belatedly published with at least one photo. PPP seems to be working fair enough.
Mid-afternoon I started getting all the stuff together for the Tongariro Northern Circuit. Sue & Simon’s place was still on offer for the two days I would have to stay of the end of this, but then things started to get unravelled.
First, Mangatepopo Hut was completely booked out for the coming days. This means doing the final 20 km – over the mountain – on the last day in one long slog. Secondly that meant staying an extra night here, which was no longer on the books, because Sue’s daughter Jessica is due to stay for a couple of days at that time.
After a couple of rounds of negotiations it turns out that Sue’s other daughter who lives right across the road was prepared to let a room (actually the whole house) for 3 days for $200, so that was very quickly a done deal. The shopping had to be done – even managed to find some condensed milk in a tube this time, with the help of a shop assistant. The crackers may well be superfluous, as Simon’s bread is already cooling on the table as I write this.
Meanwhile the washing from the Whanganui River Journey had been done and was drying when the rain struck and the stuff had to be moved to the portable washing line at the side of the house where it can dry on the colonial deck.
With all of this done, I decided there was not enough time for dinner with Roger & Jackie, & put a call through to their digs, and went out for a pizza – salmon, bell peppers and capers for $14.5 plus a Tuatara stout for $9. While I was waiting for my pizza, Simon came in, as his ladies had had the same idea, only as takeaways.
Back here the washing was dry, most things packed away, a day was transcribed to the preblog phase, and finally the diary written. Only three more emails.
