(written on December 10th and January 17th from notes taken previously)
Decent night. Relatively early in the morning, a gentleman showed up with who I’m guessing was his daughter as well as a little dog and started playing music. 🙃
I was already up, so it was no big deal for me, but the two girls in the campervan right next to where he was had not yet emerged from their van, so it might not have been as nice of a wake up for them. 😅
From there, I headed to Te Reinga Falls, one of my favorite falls in all of New Zealand, buuuuut… it a closed due to their building a brand new bridge over the river just before the falls.
I thought about waiting for the workday to be over and then heading over to enjoy the falls, but it was early in the day…
I debated for a while trying to decide whether or not I was going to stay and wait for the work date to be over. In fact, I stayed for a good, long time just veging in my van, doing a little journal catch up, and trying to decide if I thought it was worth waiting (the construction, and also the river being super dirty from the rain).
Eventually, I began driving up Tiniroto Rd a good little ways, I think as a time killer? before finally giving up for good and driving all the way to Papakorito Falls where I snapped some pictures, ate peanut butter and jelly, and continued working on my journal catch-up efforts.
After Papakorito Falls, I headed over to Aniwaniwa Falls, just down the road on the way back, snapped some pictures, and then began the drive back to Wairoa (signs saying the lake road was going to be closed after I think 6 pm, and I didn’t want to get stuck there.
Took some pictures of the lake on the way back and then got pulled over in Frasertown? on the drive back, as I was holding my phone up to look at Google Maps, having realised that I had forgotten to press start when having it take me back to the Freedom camping place in Wairoa.
So I got pulled over for using my phone while driving. 😅
Fortunately, he just gave me a warning (which was probably a little lucky because I thoughtlessly said, “thanks for giving me a warning.” 😅
😆
Got back to the same Freedom camping spot as last night and veged out for a bit before crashing.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 