I woke up somewhere between 6 and 6:30 on day 3 of the trip, day 2 in New Zealand.
I think there were some gentle sprinkles of rain relatively quietly crashing to earth–in contrast to the thunderous falls that echoed in the hidden canyon below.
It was in that morning that I realized that we were parked at the top of the falls, and that in order to get to the bottom we would have to walk down.
They had a few lookouts from the top, so you could get a beautiful view of the falls from either side, but the full view would be from the bottom. In the early hours of the morning, there really weren’t people around. As I wandered the paths at the top of the falls, I ran into a few older people out for their morning walk, as there was a neighborhood right next to where the falls is.
I also got some unfortunate text messages from Stevie that the lift that I bought broke down yet again, this time on the very first job that I was away for. I was worried about that, as Stevie isn’t really mechanically inclined, or at least not experienced, I should say, so without me there, if there were any problems with the lift, then we would pretty much be dead in the water.
And so we were yesterday.
Stevie is going to try renting a lift to do the rest of the jobs while I am gone. Hopefully, in the meantime, we can figure out what’s wrong with the lift. I’m hoping that it might just be something simple that is a user-error problem. That has been the case with a handful of the issues we’ve dealt with. We have had other issues as well, but most of them seem to be user-error related.
Crossing my fingers with all of that.
Anyway, so I spent a bit of the morning stressed out about what was going on with my tree service business with the equipment and everything and concerns with Stevie and how he was feeling with everything and how everything was going.
Fortunately, I was able to deal with what I could deal with and sort of put it out of my mind. I wandered around for a couple hours before heading back to the car. Chase woke up about that time, and we wandered down below the falls where he got out his drone and took some incredible footage of the waterfall. I went for a good little swim in the water below the falls (one of my favorite things to do, bar none), and I climbed up and around and behind the waterfall and got a pretty cool little video of the water crashing down from above to below.
I found out later that my brother, who lived in New Zealand back in the ’90s, sat in the exact same spot where I took the video. Kind of fun!
There was a pretty awesome tree that we took pictures of and with on the way back to the car. That was super cool.
After our morning waterfall adventure, we went over to the auto parts store and bought a battery for the key fob, a socket and ratchet set to tighten down our battery. Some windshield, wipers and Chase went a little crazy and bought glass cleaner and Armor All to spiffy up our car, which we named Sophie, and I’m sure Sophie appreciated being taken care of a little better. 😊
We also stopped off at the grocery store and bought a whole pile of food that should last us a little while. Super nice to have a car to store everything in instead of just slapping it in our backpacks. I think we’re a little spoiled here in New Zealand. It’s not going to be as easy, I don’t think, in Australia. In Australia, we have to deal with registration and titles and whatnot like they have in the United States. That said, tourists do regularly buy cars when going to Australia, so I need to figure out how that’s done. I know I have a brother-in-law who lives in Australia (actually, my brother’s brother-in-law… Not sure if there is a name for that relationship). We might be able to figure something out through that avenue? Not sure.
Anyway, after our big shopping trip, we took a drive out to Whangarei Heads, which someone had recommended we go and see. There were some beautiful places, but it wasn’t amazing or anything.
There was a cool little dock that we stopped at and it had a pretty good-sized school of fish underneath it. Chase had the bright idea of using a little tupperware sealer container thingy to take underwater videos, so he put his phone inside the tupperware and was able to take video of the fish as they swam around. That was super cool.
Chase also saw a dead end road on our maps, and historically, dead end roads have been pretty nice places on my travels to find little adventures to enjoy, and so we went over to the little dead end had one of the highlights of our trip so far.
It was just a simple thing but we ran into an older New Zealander couple that has spent the last 2 years just traveling around New Zealand in a small camper. We chatted with them for probably an hour or so just about New Zealand, and traveling, and about life in general… all sorts of good stuff. It was a great little conversation. They are absolutely lovely people, and we were able to connect with them on Facebook, so that will be cool for the future.
During our conversation, they brought out two awesome travel books about the wonders of nature in both the north and south islands, let us look at them, and then proceeded to give them to us!!
Super cool people (John and Jan). 😊
Let’s see, that was all at Ocean Beach, southeast of Whangarei Heads. Chase and I did a little body surfing in the ocean waves, which were pretty decent, actually. We caught some good waves before calling it a rap for the day–a rap at the beach, that is!
From there, we took a little sightseeing drive on a loop that seemed like it might be pretty.
And it was. 😍
There was one area where we saw a little side road off the main loop. Or almost looked like a driveway, but there looked like there were public road signs on it, so we ventured down the little road, and I’m glad we did!
As we drove, we came around a little bend to a view that was just awe inspiring.
The sun was beginning to set behind us, but it was still up so it had that late-afternoon bright sun but at that angle where the color contrasts are so sharp.
The greens were so bright and rich against the backdrop of ocean and sky. The turquoise and blue ocean waves crashing white against the sides of the coves.
It was… breathtaking. I think Chase’s drone footage might do it justice.
I think I’ve already said it, but New Zealand is absolutely gorgeous. 😍
With the sun going down, and with a nearly 3 1/2 hour drive to our next destination (Cape Reinga), we pointed the headlights northwest and began the long drive.
I had been driving the whole trip to that point, but sometime around maybe 9 or 10 pm, Chase took over, driving us nearly all the way to Cape Reinga. We stopped about 15 minutes before it, finding a nice little spot off the highway to park and sleep for the night–again, both of us packed like sardines in Sophie’s back end.
I’m getting tired. I’m still not caught up on the trip details, but… I’m getting there.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 