So… Right before we went to bed, Chase headed down with his headlamp to get a look at the waterfall, because the place that he had found for us to stay at had a waterfall, and we both absolutely love waterfalls. In the dark, though, the waterfall really wasn’t much to look at, and he relayed as much back to me.
We woke up in the morning to some very loud birds that had quite the repertoire of songs to sing, and mixed in with that were a couple of roosters crowing seemingly constantly. 🙃
I ventured out first and walked upstream a bit and found a little falls that I enjoyed. It was only like maybe 8 or 10 ft tall, but it was still nice. I didn’t want to go see the rest of the waterfalls without Chase, so I went back to the car, where we got all of our stuff organized for the morning, and then we decided to go take a look at the waterfall that wasn’t much to look at, but we were there anyway, so we figured we might as well.
Glad. We. Did!!!!
Let’s just say that trying to gauge what a waterfall is like in the dark with a cheap headlamp is not going to be the most accurate way of determining its relative beauty.
To that point in New Zealand, 6 days worth of travel, we had seen several waterfalls already. But we both agreed that the set of waterfalls on this section of the river was by far the most beautiful set of waterfalls we had seen the entire trip!
Even better than that, as we went further down the canyon, it just got better and better and better!
The first falls was a triplet, three separate Cascades, each. Each probably 30 or so feet tall, possibly more. The first one came cascading beautifully down, and then it jogged to the left (from the perspective of the viewer downstream looking up at it), and then it jogged from the bottom of the second Cascade back to the right and then down another 30 ft or so. It was absolutely gorgeous, and one of these days I’ll give you pictures. 😍
After taking several photos, climbing up one of the waterfalls to take a different picture, and Chase sending up his drone for an extended photo shoot of the whole canyon area, we headed down the canon even further and came to another gorgeous waterfall, this one into a very deep pool of water that we could have gone cliff jumping in but didn’t end up doing. We took a whole bunch of pictures of the absolutely gorgeous scenery, walking down what I’m guessing we’re either limestone or sandstone steps that had been carved away into the solid rock of the area and then had worn even further from people walking on them and rain washing over them. Some of the steps having eroded so far that they were touching the next step below.
It was about that point in the trip that we ran into an older couple that lived just a few houses away from the little canyon there, on there morning walk around the loop of waterfalls. They were from Switzerland but had been living in New Zealand since the ’70s. We chatted with them for probably a good half hour or so. Standing on a little walkway over the rushing water below. They were a joy to talk to, and they even gave us their address and phone number if we ever wanted to stop in and visit them. Lovely people we’ve met so far on this trip. Lots and lots of lovely people. It is a definite reinforcer to me of my long-held belief that the vast majority of people that exist on this earth are just good people. Sure we have plenty of differences, but oh mostly all just good people. 😊
Chase and I explored a good bit further down the river. Just seeing if there was anything more, and it was fun to explore, though we didn’t find any additional waterfalls. We took a handful of pictures on the way back up to the parking lot where our car was, and we both agreed that the happy accident of finding this incredible waterfall was one more example of things going better than planned. BTP, part 2. 🥳😊 (Actually, our visit the Hobbiton was another example of things going better than plan, and we’ve had several of those experiences along the way, so this is probably much more than a part two. Probably more like a part 10 🙃)
After we got back to the parking area, we chatted with one guy who was in from Texas for a wedding, and they were doing wedding pictures at that waterfall. Waterfall. Then we chatted with a lady from Australia who told me that she had two daughters, and that we were welcome to go stay with them in Australia, and that that was how she met her husband, staying at somebody’s house while on a vacation. 🙃
I don’t think I’m going to take her up on the offer, but that was kind.
We also ran into a couple from Utah who had just recently moved to New Zealand and had been there for 3 months. They were going to give it a year and see if they liked it before they returned. So far, I think they like it. 😊
And so do I. 🙃
From there, Chase and I headed into town to hopefully once and for all get Sophie transferred into my name so that we were all square with the New Zealand government and whatnot for ownership of the vehicle. I finished filling out the form, and we drove to the nearest VTNZ, which is the place where they do their vehicle inspections to allow you to drive the vehicle on the roads. We didn’t need to inspect the vehicle ourselves because the inspection follows the vehicle and not the owner, so it’s inspections are good until sometime next year.
I walked into the inspection place, and to my delight, there were only like four people ahead of me online. Online. I also noticed that all three of the ladies behind the counter were smiling and laughing and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Thus, when they was my turn to get up to the counter, I decided to take the opportunity to point out how awesome it was to see them all smiling and enjoying themselves behind the counter. I told them what the DMV experience in the United States is like, oftentimes having to wait several hours in line, and oftentimes having to deal with people who clearly do not enjoy their job. Job. It was a fun little inner change with them, and I think it was entertaining for all of the other people in the room, as an American was talking about American life and comparing it to New Zealand life and whatnot. Whatnot. There was another group of people from the United States there, some Latino people who had been speaking Spanish most of the time I was there, but I guess we’re from California and it just come to New Zealand and were getting New Zealand driver’s licenses. Not sure why they were getting driver’s licenses if they were only going to be there for a month, but maybe they didn’t know that their US driver’s license is also good in New Zealand.
Anyway, after that fun little exchange with the ladies behind the counter and the Latino people in front of the other lady down the counter, and after swiping my card for a grand total of $9 New Zealand, I now had the vehicle registered in my name. 🥳
Meanwhile, Chase had gone to the auto parts store that was right next door and had purchased a brand new set of bright headlight bulbs, as we’ve been driving for nearly a week on functional headlights, but the barely lit up the road at all. We had to use our brights to see the road safely in many instances, so he bought some new headlights and was putting those in when I came out.
From the parts store in the DMV, we headed over to the grocery store, where we had a pretty fun time. Grocery shopping. We wandered around the pack and save for probably 30 minutes or so. Sort of staring at the shelves. Wondering what on earth to buy, sort of copying what we had purchased last time, but not able to get everything cuz some of the things we bought weren’t offered at the store even though it was the same franchise.
While we were in the store shopping, I had the thought that maybe would be fun to ask one of the shoppers to see if they had any suggestions for foods that we might want to try while in New Zealand because they likely wouldn’t be offered outside of New Zealand. There was a particular woman that I was hoping to ask that question, if you know what I mean 🙃, but that didn’t work out like I had hoped.
With intended subject number one not working out, I decided just to ask the old lady who was shopping next to us. Of course, her very first suggestion was Vegemite. 🙃
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we thought it was the most disgustingly awful thing that could ever be invented by anyone to make anybody gag. I just said something to the effect of, yeah we got some of that.
Then she started talking about some other things that she had bought and suggested, and we chatted for a little while, and then said goodbye. But it wasn’t but a couple minutes later that she came back to us all. Excited with other things in the store that she thought were great deals. She handed us a box of granola type bars, and showed us some bread, and we ended up letting her drag us all around the store pointing out different things for us to buy, and because we didn’t really have anything better to do, even though we had been about ready to leave the store, we ended up staying for probably another 20 minutes as we got dragged around the store loading up our cart with all the things that she was suggesting. 🙃
It was rather comical, and she was a funny old lady who I guess was fairly well plugged into American politics because she was a Trump supporter. 🙃
I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t a Trump supporter, but it was a lot of fun to listen to her talk and to see her energy and excitement as a little old lady.
We said our goodbyes with that lady probably three times before. Finally having the goodbye be the last goodbye. From there, we went to the checkout line where I struck up a little conversation with the lady behind me as I helped her load her food onto the conveyor belt thingy, and she suggested that maybe I might find my wife in New Zealand. 🙃
We ended up spending a heck of a lot more time in the grocery store than we ever had planned. I think it was after 4:00. By the time we got out, we still had a couple more shopping stops to make. From the grocery store, we went over to the warehouse again so that Chase could buy a day pack, as day packs are a wonderful convenience when traveling like we are traveling. Traveling. He picked up a day pack, and then we made one more stop for him, and then we decided to drive north to Chums Beach where someone we had talked to earlier in the day, we think maybe that Utah couple, head mentioned would be an absolutely beautiful place to go. So we drove up the peninsula like 3 and 1/2 hours , getting there. I think sometime around 8:00. It was just dark enough that there wasn’t really much sense doing any wandering around, but it was just light enough that we were able to see the last bits of light disappear on the horizon and the outline of the ocean in the background.
It also happened to be raining.
A lot.
With the rain pounding outside, and with it being relatively early, and with the airlines having 24-hour customer service, we went to work trying to figure out what we were going to do about our desire to change our plane tickets. Chase figured out that in order to change his plane ticket it was going to cost him $700, which is a pretty penny, of course. Chatting with the Qantas customer service people, and every person I spoke with gave me a different answer. One person said that I could change my ticket. One person said that I wasn’t allowed to even change a single part of my booking, neither the locations nor the days. And on and on it went. I think I spoke with four or five different people, and every single person gave me at least one piece of information that contradicted one of the people before.
By the time all was said and done, what I had basically figured out was that if Chase wanted to change his flight it was going to be 700 bucks. And if I wanted to change my flight it was going to be a $500 penalty plus an additional $800 change in price fee because supposedly the new ticket price was $800 more than when I had bought it. What’s crazy, is that all I was trying to do was either change the middle leg on my itinerary, the leg from Christchurch to Sydney, or just remove that leg from my schedule all together. All together. At first I tried to change, but they wouldn’t let me, and then I tried to remove it all together, and they said they could do that, but in order to remove it all together, they would have to rebook the other ticket from Sydney to the United States as well, even though there was no need to change that flight at all, because it was all on the same booking, it supposedly all had to be completely redone which was going to be 1,300 out of my pocket to redo the tickets. The tickets. So I couldn’t change the flight, and if I wanted to remove the flight, it was going to be 1300. I had already bought a backup plane ticket because I was already planning on missing my middle leg, but what I found out, was that if I was a no-show to that middle leg, they would cancel the last ticket on my itinerary as well. Even though it was more than a month later from a completely different city. They would just void out the entire booking. So I was completely stuck, and trying to figure out what to do. Screwed me over because my original booking was christchurch to Sydney, but I bought another ticket later from Christchurch to Melbourne, and I told Chase to buy his ticket from Christchurch to Melbourne, so now Chase was going to Melbourne, and the airlines were now telling me that I couldn’t miss my christchurch to Sydney flight or I would lose my entire booking, so we were in this massive massive crap with airlines sticking it to you just because they could. Because they could. Awful awful, awful customer service. It just boggles my mind that airlines would have policies purposefully designed to screw you over when they have absolutely no reason to do so. I’ve already bought my ticket. I’ve already paid for my ticket. Why the heck? Do you care if I decide I’m not going to show up on that particular flight. The seat is mine. I should be able to do what I want with it, including not use it at all. But no, if I’m a no-show, then I lose my other ticket as well! Just crazy. Absolutely crazy.
To top it off, I could have bought four additional plane tickets from New Zealand to Australia and back. Four separate tickets, and all four would have been cheaper than the cost of my one flight change to rebook everything.
I spent probably 2 hours or so, both Chase and I are trying to communicate with our various airlines. Chase with Air New Zealand, and I with Qantas. It got really discouraging, really frustrating, and really stressful with the mess that it was. I was trying so many different possible combinations of things that we could do to overcome the issues that we had, but eventually, it got late, and we were tired, and discouraged and everything, so we just went to bed.
Before we went to bed, and well we were still struggling. Struggling with all the airline crap, we realized that we’d had the blower motor turned on with the key in the on position, so we weren’t just charging our devices: we were running the fan as well. Having been on the phone for so long, not paying attention to the fact that the fan was on low, we didn’t realize it until it was too late that we had drained the battery down far enough that it wouldn’t start the car. 😬
So there we were in a fairly remote area of the peninsula, definitely houses and what not around. So we probably could have found somebody with jumper cables, but pretty far away from anything that we would normally want to have available to us when we have car problems. Fortunately, I’ve had enough experience with cars as a mechanic to know that even though the battery was drained down far enough that we couldn’t start the car, there was still a chance because the weather was fairly cold, that if we just let the car alone for a little while and because the battery was a good battery that we just drained down but wasn’t bad, the charge would strengthen inside the battery and if we waited for maybe 30 minutes or so in the cold air, the battery might recharge enough to start the car. So we shut everything off. 100% disconnected obviously everything and let the car sit for about 30 minutes. Then I told Chase to pump the gas pedal while he tried to start the car. And gratefully, the car fired up without any problems. We let it run for probably 15 minutes or so after that to make sure that we recharge the battery from having a drain a little too low, but we were good to go!
So concluded our day. Chase managing to stay quite positive and I interestingly enough, though frustrated, was much more positive than I would have been in the past.
It continued to pour down rain, so we didn’t get out to go do anything. We just bedded down for the night and called it a day.
Sorry, no pictures again. I’ll get some put up soon! Just so far behind on the posts in general. Trying to churn then out. 🙃
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 