Wednesday, March 20: Cloudy and colder in the morning becoming clear & sunny by the afternoon
Walking: 8.9 km
Funky Green Voyager (Nick)
Breakfast was self-supplied: OJ, two toasted ham sandwiches (finally impressed by a sandwich toaster that doesn’t leave a mess behind and is otherwise straightforward to clean) and coffee.
Then all the stuff had to be packed up and moved out of the room because consecutive nights in the same room were not on offer. Everything packed up neatly and I was considering what to do with the day and in the process made the acquaintance of Nele, a French woman living in Cork.
Had to put a jumper on because of the cold and didn’t seem to require a hat but I took off with the camera and went down to Kuirau Park where there was a free foot bath where I came across the Australian woman from last night, and then even further on to St Faith church and the Maori village Ohinemutu with its impressive wharenui. From there I followed the shoreline, found a spot to photograph the sunset from, and further along to the museum and Blue Baths (both closed) and back to the center of town.
Interactive Map
Back here was shown the new room, unpacked a few things in preparation for possibly using the gimbal tonight, then had lunch with the English couple with daughter who had been to Whakarewarewa this morning (two ham sandwiches again). Then I set about transcribing the Swedish entries in the blog until two weeks after I return. Had a look at the gimbal instructions and tried resetting it and calibrating it, but in Mode 3 (fixed) it does produce some very odd sounds when put in a pickle.
Had been shopping just after lunch and was also on the lookout for where I might get lamb/venison for the next fix (Cobb & Co?/Valentine’s?) and had enquired about Rainbow Springs by night but apparently that is part of a whole program that costs in excess of $150, so not much interest.
Time for dinner and I thought that Oppie’s wouldn’t be that bad for fried rice, which it wasn’t – BBQ pork for $12.5, very large serving – possibly as a takeaway could have been divided into two portions, but very tasty and quite a deal of meat.
Had to make sure the card for the A1300 was up to date (data for rawopint had to be copied) and everything packed into the back pack for an early start for a possible sunset shoot, with Nele wanting to know about all the work I was apparently doing and needed to be shown a video or two.
Slide Show
Then I was off in the direction of the shore, but I noticed there were no clouds and turned back to shoot Eat Streat in full detail. Found a place at the south end and was able to reach the required elevation by putting the tripod on one of the flower beds and fired away. A couple of people guessed I was doing timelapse and a bit of conversation followed. Packed in about 8:15 and will see about shooting the night market tomorrow night.
Chatted away with two junior doctors from England.
