Monday, March 2: Quite cloudy at first, becoming fine & warm
Sunflower Backpackers, 33 Timandra St., New Plymouth 4310, tel.: +64 6 759 0050, triple as single (BBH, $45 + $5)
Robert was up earlier than me and the table was already laid out for breakfast. The usual fare: Cornflakes, banana, two poached eggs on toast and coffee. Then the packing had to take place – got most of the stuff into the rucksack, and the chilly bin is now fully functional with two frozen water bottles.
Decided to make Robert a present of the book and he insisted on an inscription (he had given me a print of one of his paintings the night before) and then the obligatory picture had to be taken for his collection. Fiddly mobile phone camera. He was also very pleased that I had gotten his ancient XP machine to run a little faster by clearing caches, deleting zombie files, killing a few processes, installing a few updates and eventually reducing the processor load to less than 100%. We swapped emails and no doubt he will find me on facebook. I’ll check to see if he has had his hip replacement surgery if I pass through Hamilton at a late stage in the journey.
He had briefly gone shopping with his mate Bill and was back again when I was ready to go.
Today was mainly road trip. I didn’t want to go through Hamilton itself so I took the Pirongia Road just as Pirongia herself was reappearing through the clouds. Stopped briefly in Pirongia Village for a drink, then in Otorohanga where I quickly found the library and was able to book this place once the librarian got the wifi sorted out. Fast internet for a change makes a difference.
Then I had a quadruple stop in Te Kuiti – supermarket for tomato sauce, bakery for two huge sausage rolls for $2 apiece, petrol station for the first tank refill, and the layby from 2009 up the hill just out of town overlooking the Te Kuiti valley for my picnic of just one of the sausage rolls.
After that it was the long haul down SH 3 although there are some interesting limestone landscapes around that would warrant a stop or two if there was more time, and a couple of tunnels. Drove through Mokau, but did manage a brief stop near the Three Sisters Rocks, but really wanted to try the White Cliffs Walkway and pressed on without taking the walk along the beach to the rocks. Reached the start of the path at 3:00, which was probably too late to do the whole walk there and back, as the tide was coming in. Thought that it would probably be better to go to New Plymouth first, do some shopping and washing, and then see if it could be done tomorrow.
The shopping had to be done to get enough together for breakfast, and shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and deo stick had to be bought. I can possibly use one shopping bag with non refrig food and the larger vanity containers, and free up the other shopping bag from books to use it for actual shopping.
Dinner was a cheeseburger & chips ($6.5) from a Chinese takeaway in town. Took a sunset series and wished I had more tripods.
