Monday, March 16: Moderately strong rain and somewhat windy as cyclone Pam moved south to the east of New Zealand

Ethel’s

Pam arrived during the night and by the time I was up it was clear that nothing would be on the agenda today except for sitting in front of the computer. Ethel’s breakfast was peaches and cereal, then toast, and of course, coffee. Then it was time to transcribe the diary.

Managed to get all of the diary copied for publication up to 10 days after I leave, so that is enough until I recover from that bout of jetlag. Then it was time for lunch, and by that time I needed some movement, so I drove into town to the pie place for a steak pie for $3.9. Checked the hunting place for a pot holder and they had one for $11, but a price comparison was not possible because Kathmandu was closed (as were all the schools and a lot of smaller vendors) because of the storm, which had actually turned out to be rather mild.

Had the pie back here with tomato sauce. then it was time for some pictures. PPP had failed during the night because one of the PNG files had been improperly saved, and was finally finishing by the time I had finished lunch. Managed to get a number of panoramas from the Tongariro, and in the meantime started some planning for the Waikaremoana, including a place to stay for tomorrow night. Then it looks like an early start on Wednesday for the track in three days, then it will be on to Napier for Friday, the gannets on Saturday, then Taupo on Sunday.

Just after 4:00 I put a call through to Henry and went around to his place where he & Pauline had just returned from Rarotonga. We chatted for a while and I gave them a copy of the book, signed it for them, and received a greenstone pendant and a hongi in return. Very nice to seen them again.

Came back to reheat the rest of yesterday’s fried rice for dinner, and will now see about getting some GPS tracks finished so they can also be published on the blog.