(written on December 24th from notes taken previously)
Spent a little time journaling this morning before heading out and finding the bathroom at the other side of the very large sports park.
I had lots of recyclable trash that had been building up for a while because I hadn’t run into a place that offered recycling bins, so I looked up the recycling center and found that it was near the turn off to the waterfall hike that I was at yesterday, so I headed on over there and was able to dispose of not only the bottles and cans and what not, but also the rear seat brackets I had removed at the mountain Beach a while back. 🎉
Nice to be able to offload a bunch of stuff that’s been taking up space in the van. 🥳
Already near the waterfall height area again, I headed back over to the same place to maybe give it a second go, being much earlier in the day this time.
I did a little more journal catch up writing, and then as I was getting ready to head up, I noticed that there were pictures posted of a man who had gone missing in the area a while back. I googled online and found out that he was still missing, his dog having walked out of the bush alone and malnourished something like 2 months later. 😞
It’s still a mystery what happened to him. There are mine shafts in the area, and it’s a rather large forested reserve, but after lengthy search and rescue efforts, including help from those who knew the mine shafts well, they suspended the search.
So I had that on my mind a little bit and thought that maybe I would do a little looking myself.
Text it back and forth with my sister Tish a bit, which was nice. 😊 And I chatted a bit with an older lady who mentioned that there was a little swimming hole just off the main path, so I decided to give that a look instead of hiking all the way up to the falls.
I started walking up the river itself a little ways, instead of the path, looking for signs of the missing man, but that proved to be a little more challenging than I would have liked, so I ended up just going back to the path and finding my way over to the swimming hole.
The swimming hole wasn’t amazing, but it was… nice. 😊 No issues with bugs to any noticeable degree. The water was very cold, and maybe just slightly deeper than I am tall at the deepest point, but it was… nice. 😊
Quiet, refreshing, relaxing… nice. 😊
And as a bonus, swimming with my clothes on is as good as going to the laundromat (in little Stephen’s book, at least. 🙃).
Did a little more journal catch up. Also did some travel research, knowing that I’m going to have to leave New Zealand and go somewhere in January before I’m allowed to come back.
Right now I’m leaning toward Tasmania, but I’m also considering the Cook Islands and maybe even other places. We’ll see.
After an enjoyable time at the swimming hole, I headed back to town, checking out different places to stay but eventually heading back to the same place I stayed at last night, as the others were full.
Chatted with my sister Heather for a little bit, veged out a bit, ate dinner, and called it a night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 