Friday, March 8: Rain on and off throughout the day
Paul’s (airbnb, $37.6)
Made the acquaintance of Sid & Angela at breakfast this morning, and a discussion of criticality followed – he was an (Indian) epidemiologist in public health, and I never found out what she did, except that she plays the piano rather well, and the upright in the lounge room was in tune. They escaped rather quickly after that and I was left on my own with Marina & Brennagh.
Surprise, surprise was that Dempsey’s had refunded me the full $108 I was asking for. There is a real issue of getting email through to them, though, as mine was already labelled as spam. I deleted my remark on their facebook page and will leave it at that for a while.
I really only had the computer to play with and made sure some initial steps in organising the image files for renaming. I had already had a look around about getting to Taupo or Rotorua from New Plymouth (very early start, change in Hamilton). but from there to the Coromandel requires going via Auckland. One commercial sea kayaking operator in Paihia wrote something on facebook and is doing some tours in the latter part of the month – guided and correspondingly expensive (five days, $1250) but it’s all inclusive and would be such an opportunity.
It was getting on time for the bus. Marina had convinced Brennagh to give me a lift to the bus station, although her car was barely holding together. I had the rest of the baguette and ham for lunch. Squashed the remains of the butter into a plastic container and was otherwise ready to go by 1:15; Brennagh set a time of half past and we loaded the car with my stuff and her friend, and took off down to the bus station. Managed to get an indication from the bloke staffing the “office” there that the bus would be pretty much on time, which, surprisingly, it was. Not very full either, and not much in the way of other passengers leaving to getting on the bus along the way. We passed the gigantic cheese factory that Howard works in, and Hawera is a larger town than I expected. Taranaki itself was hiding behind the clouds and as we reached New Plymouth there was a bit more rain.
Made my way to Paul’s and was greeted by him and shown around the basement that he has set up as his airbnb center. One Japanese student here, apart from that a very quiet neighborhood, although only 100 m or so from the highway and the shops.
Which I soon took off to. Tried getting $500 from bnz but no go (“limit exceeded”), spent my last money in Paknsave, came back here to put the beer in the fridge, then set off for town to find a real bank and then something to eat. No Westpac, only a Kiwi Bank, and they gave me the $500 requested. Finding Ms White’s for a pizza was a little difficult because it was in a food court of the White Hart Hotel, but eventually I was able to identify it – had a large XPA on tap, and a #8 pizza – Pesto, spinach, cherry tomato, stracciatella, basil/$19 (should have been a #7 – Pork & fennel sausage, smoked ham, salame, roasted onions/$18, but anyhow) – was originally crispy, but the addition of fresh stracciatella made the middle somewhat soggy. Closer to good than excellent.
Plan for tomorrow will be to arrange the Around the Mountain Circuit shuttle after looking at the weather; book two more nights in New Plymouth for the return; inquire in Taupo/Rotorua about shuttles to the thermal areas and Aratiatia Falls. Then perhaps north.
