The Best Laid Schemes o' Mice an' Men

It's been awhile & I know some of you have been regularly checking in to see what we're up to, or not as the case maybe. As mentioned a couple of blogs ago after getting home from the Coromandel & tying up a few lose ends we were hoping to head up north for winter. But 'life' has a way of getting in the way & foiling the best laid plans.

A couple of things have happened that have changed our direction for a few months. Firstly, my Dad had quite an stay in hospital, in Hastings for three weeks & then in Wellington where he was flown to have a double by-pass heart operation. All in all 27 days in hospital while he waited for an infection to clear, then waiting for a place in theatre & on the plane to get him there. Much to the family's relief he has come through the whole ordeal with flying colours and is well on the way to being back to his normal self.



During this time I drove to Napier to support Mum & also to drive her down to Wellington so we could be there for Dad during and after the op. And while most of our time was spent at the hospital Mum & I managed to do a little "tiki-touring" of our own driving around the Wellington harbour. We had lunch at the very popular & quirky Chocolate Fish Café in Shelly Bay before we continued around to the harbour entrance and onto the south facing bays of Wellington.

Chocolate Fish Café

Evans Bay Boat Shed

Scorch-O-Rama Café Paua Wall, Scorching Bay

After just five days & very good care in Wellington, Dad discharged back to home in Napier. I stayed on for a couple of weeks to help out with the patient. Dad was a model patient although we had to lay down the law a couple of times! :)



Autumn in Maize Field- Wairarapa

In amongst travelling to Napier & then onto Wellington I did manage to take a good number of photos including many beautiful churches through Southern Hawkes Bay & the Wairarapa. Mum was quite happy for me to stop every few miles to shoot another church & in fact a journey that should have taken us about four hours in the end took seven! We were in no hurry as Dad was meant to be under the knife but when we finally got to the hospital we found him sitting up in bed wondering where we were. His operation had been delayed by 24hrs.

Hawkes Bay Churches

In the meantime I have also decided to have a foot operation I was putting off hoping it wouldn't get any worse. Without going into the gory details I need to have a foot/toe realignment due to hereditary arthritis in my right foot which makes it very painful to do any type of walking or exercise & wear any shoes with a heel. I had a cortisone injection to help out while we travelled the Coromandel & it worked wonders but as it started to wear off the pain slowly returned.

We plan on doing lots of tramping & bush walks once we are on the road full time & especially in the South Island and as there is only a three month window of opportunity before we leave for the South I decided to have it done now. The worst part is that its also three months recuperation with no weight bearing for six weeks & my lower leg in a plaster cast. I know how inconvenient that is as I broke my ankle six or so years ago & it had the same repair time.

So it's now or never & luckily I managed to get got one of the best surgeons in our area and with a little bit of arm twisting of his senior nurse she manage to allocate me a surgery time that suited and one of the last he had available until October!

And because we'll be waiting out this time here in Tauranga we've also finally come to the conclusion that we really need to sell this house (you will remember that this is the one that came as part trade when we sold our original home) rather than keep it as a base or rent it out while we're away. So it will go on the market two weeks after my operation & hopefully not sell too soon otherwise I'll be laid up in the fifth-wheeler over at the Mount beach again.........hmmm.......actually that doesn't sound too bad. David has promised he'll do all the house work before each Open Home, I like that! :)

So there you are, that is now the plan. Just a small hiccup or two in the scheme of things but we will be on the road soon enough. We're just going to miss out on seeing some of the North Island, that will have to wait until we return in a year or two from down South.

Maraekakaho Woolshed, SH50, Hastings, Hawkes Bay

Lucky Escape

1250kms, 41 days, 12 camping sites & 50,000 photos (not quite but you get the picture, or should that be photo) we are back in Tauranga after our wonderful trip around the Coromandel Peninsula. We’ll be here for a month or so catching up with visiting family & tying up a few more loose ends before we are back on the road again, hopefully in early June.  Our next adventure will be exploring the "Winterless North” during winter(of course) before we finally head, in spring, to the South Island for a year or so.

Our last night at Waihi Beach was very unsettling. The drought has definitely broken in this part of the country.  I had thought the rain at Broken Hill was torrential but it had nothing on the hammering we got at Waihi Beach. The noise was deafening, the rain ran off the van in a solid sheet, the paths & roadway around the site were flooded & poor Maddie thought the world was going to end. With the school holidays starting, I felt sorry for the dozens of campers that had arrived late afternoon & early evening to set up their tents & caravans. I could also hear the stream that flowed just behind  our van roaring through the narrow gap on its way to the beachfront.  I was thinking it was lucky we gave those eels a few feeds because they’ll have surly been swept away or if they did manage to hunker down in the stream bed they wouldn’t be seeing the light of day for a few days.

The stream runs under the bridge just beside our camp site

After a very long night and just before daybreak the rain got even heavier, solid & torrential for a couple of hours & then it just stopped.  After that a steady stream of bedraggled campers & excited kids started making their way to the showers & kitchen but generally their camp sites looked like they had survived the night reasonably well. There was a lot of surface water lying about and that benign stream that was at the most about 6 inches deep yesterday was now a raging torrent. I took the photo below with my cell phone from my bed when I woke. 

Wet & bleak

And I bet most of you reading this are thinking we got caught in the breaking news; the Waihi Stream has broken it banks, there are flash floods, dozens of campers at the Top10 holiday park have been evacuated, firemen are using ropes to help campers across a bridge. Waihi Beach Road is flooded & cars are stuck in flood waters etc. Well that was our “lucky escape”, we left yesterday morning after Friday night’s heavy rain. The latest problems have been caused by Saturday’s downpour. Here’s the stream before & after Friday’s rain, it’s now burst its banks & flooded all the cabins, the bridge that fireman were called to help with evacuations is the one that was beside our campsite.  Maybe we would have floated out of there had we still be on site, David is so relieved we were gone.

That's what it looked like the day before

Before leaving Waihi Beach, we had a reasonably quite last day letting Maddie enjoy the campground facilities & making friends with some of the arriving children. It was lovely for us to have the time with Maddie but we can both honestly say we NEVER want to be in such a popular family orientated campground during school holidays again. The noise & activity went on all day & well into the night. I seriously think that some parents must come for a break themselves, they seem to release their kids into the grounds & say “go for it” just be home for dinner!

Maddie & I went to feed the eels again, there seemed to be lots more & I noticed all the red swirls on a few of the eel photos that I had over-exposed, maybe it's the slime that they're releasing as they slithered about all over each other.

Notice the red swirls, maybe slime?

Maddie also wanted to go shell hunting again, she didn’t think she had enough shells to take home for Mum & she also wanted to find some more of my special ones for me.  I think she felt guilty as while her & Poppa were washing her shells yesterday she tried to help by washing mine too. She threw my delicate shells into the bucket with hers & gave them a good rinse around & broke most of them. She told me Poppa broke them but then later must have thought better of it & said, she & Poppa had broken them but we’d get some more tomorrow.  True to her word she found me lots more.

Shell Pasta

Waihi Beach

We did our last dump station duties at the fairly new & well appointed Waihi Beach dump station, Maddie was intrigued to see what was going on, although quickly took a few steps back when the lever was pulled. She had been curious whenever she  used the toilet as to where it was going, she even took  a look underneath the van to check it out once.  Maddie has also named out water pump Mr Woodpecker, & it does sound like a woodpecker everytime it hammers through the van.

The connected hose is to flush the black tank

And that was that. We drove through to Tauranga yesterday morning in overcast weather, managed to park up the van & unpack a fair bit before the rain hit us as well, solid torrential rain that has flooded parts of Tauranga too. The drought has well & truly broken.

The rain pouring off our slide-out roof back in Tauranga.
I really wanted to get out there & save some of it :)

We have had an amazing six weeks & have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Life on the road is all it’s cracked up to be & more. You do have to have an open mind & be ready to step outside your comfort zone should the need arise, you do have to prepared to compromise on some things that you might usually take for granted but generally it’s a fantastic way of exploring our beautiful country & we're loving it. It’s a thrill to wake each morning to a different view & know that each new day will bring new experiences. We have met some great people & without exception everyone is so friendly & welcoming. We really do live in Paradise.

We threw ourselves in the deep end by tackling the Coromandel as our first major trip but we’ve decided that David will be able to handle anything that comes his way now, nothing could be worse than some of the roads that we have travelled.

I’m working on a map of our travels with links to all the places we’ve visited & links back to the blog which I’ll post here in due course. In the meantime a big thank you too, to the dozens of people who are following my blog, it’s nice to know you’re  “Out There” following along.

See you up north…..

Maddie's Day

Maddie was up with the sparrows this morning, keen for poppa to wake up and take her swimming. Which he did twice during the day. Maddie has been having swimming lessons & is doing really well but we didn't have any floatation devices for her with us. She really wanted to swim in the big pool & then we remembered our life jackets. Turned upside down & with your legs through the arms holes you sit upright & bob about in the water. We have done this in the past ourselves in a hot water swimming hole on the Waikato River while sipping a glass of wine. Maddie was a little hesitant to start with but Poppa soon got her sorted & then he couldn't get her out of there.

We then found the eels to feed in the stream that runs through the campground. There were about 6 or 7  at first just lazing in the shallow water but as soon as we started feeding them they came from everywhere to join in the frenzy. Don't ever think there's no eels about when you have a paddle in a stream, I watched in horror as they came out of holes in rocks you'd hardly think they could fit & from under rocks & the retaining wall with gaps no thicker than your finger. They appeared from everywhere, swimming upstream through the rapids with their backs out of the water, climbing over exposed rocks & up the rocks to take the bread from David's hand. It was fascinating watching them and when the food had gone they all slithered back from whence they'd come until there were only half a dozen left again.

Next we had lunch at a café down the road & then went beachcombing There had been a large surf overnight & at high tide this morning due to the strong wind. There was a lot of debris, seaweed & shells washed up to the high tide line. Maddie collected a lot of colourful shells to take home & I found some familiar delicate "sheep's horn" shells. As kids we used to collect shells & make ornaments with plaster of paris. Sheeps horns were highly sort after by us as they only appeared after a heavy sea, which wasn't often.

Waihi Beach