Thursday, March 26: Some fine spells in the course of the day but mainly cloudy, and rain in the evening

Tramping: Cathedral Cove, 3.3 km

On the Beach

The two Chinese girls were very well organised and after their instant noodles for breakfast and some chocolate they had packed up what little they had and were downstairs on the dot of 10:00 to wait for their bus, which as far as I could see was some time in coming. In the meantime I had gone for a walk in the direction of the outer settlements and had not seen very much, except for one heron who allowed me to get very close.

I decided on driving out to Hahei to see what the story with kayaking was, although the waves today looked no smaller that yesterday’s – because the brochure said, “Daily.” Had a quick lunch of some toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches and then took off down the road (~30 km) with most of the equipment I thought was needed. Found the place in Hahei, but no one at home; only a handwritten sign that the morning had been called off but that the afternoon was running. Found some phones at the tiny shopping centre and called but the afternoon tour had also been called off; was advised to call back tomorrow morning.

Once out there and with nothing else to do I drove out to the car park to do the walk from the car park to Cathedral Cove. Very brief, but at Mare’s Leg it was just on high tide, and the archway was flooded, and really big waves were crashing down. Not much chance of getting boats to land here if you could get them here at all. Time lapses were taken of various scenes and I recorded the crashing waves from inside the arch. People were swimming about in the surf but it did look very rough indeed.

Came back and was greeted by two Swiss girls, Aline & Sarah, who are my roommates for the moment. We all got our computers out and running and I spent about an hour on trying to control the A470’s shutter speed via CHDK for the fixed exposure part of the intervalometer script. Requires at least a half-shoot in the script to take effect. Will have to try to finalise this and test it with variable lighting.

Went down to the pizza/gyros place for a gourmet pizza (El Camino, 11A Coghill St, closed Mondays, open late afternoon/evening all other days, BYO) – large cajun chicken for $23. The weight of the box was enough to tell that this would be enough for two nights, and the surprise was that despite being totally overladen, it was thoroughly crispy. So there, it may take a Greek to do it, but it can be done. Very tasty as well, and quite spicy. I just wonder what is on the dine-in menu, whether it includes the old Greek favourites of sky-high mixed grills and fish of all sorts and sizes.

Finished off the evening getting a few more of the 50 best pictures ready and sorting out the accommodation for Saturday until Tuesday. Wednesday will be at Cape Brett and then I will have to try to book quickly for Easter. Perhaps Thursday and Friday in Paihia or Russell. Saturday and Sunday where there’s a nice beach and a view of the moon, and Monday near the car rentals so that I don’t have to fight my way over the bridge.