(written on the 30th from notes taken yesterday!).
I’m grateful for cell phone alarms and countdown timers. 🙏
With check-in at the ferry starting at 6:15 a.m. and running I think until 7:45, I wanted to get there as early as possible, and I certainly didn’t want to accidentally sleep in, so I set my alarm for 5:00 and account down timer to go off at like 5:05, just in case something didn’t go properly with the alarm clock setting.
Because the sun comes up so early, it was already beginning to get light outside, so I was able to wait to put on my headlights until after they were pointing away from the campers next to me.
Oh, and the sunrise over the lake was pretty. ☺️
The drive from the north end of Lake Wairarapa to the ferry was a bit over an hour and involved going over a decent small-mountain pass (The mountains aren’t super tall according to my experience and standards, but they are tall enough that the east side of the mountains seems to be much dryer.
Going over passes with my van can be a bit sketchy because not only are my brakes super squishy, so you have to pump them to get decent braking ability in high-demand situations, but there’s also the issue with my My transmission being unable to downshift, so I can’t put the transmission into first or second gear to slow myself down going down hills.
So I have to get creative so as not to wreck the van and to make sure I don’t burn up my brakes.
I should probably spend some time trying to figure these two issues out. I’m guessing it’s the seals on my master cylinder causing the problem with the brakes, and I’m guessing the transmission range sensor is messing with the transmissions ability to recognize what gear it’s in, so it’s defaulting to all the forward gears being Drive, instead of L, 2, and D.
But those are just educated guesses.
Anyway, so it was a bit nerve-racking going down the downhill portion of the drive, coasting as much as I could, but then having to pump because corners are tight.
All with very steep hill sides.
And New Zealand, for whatever reason, puts in wooden guard rails in a lot of places, so I think they’re more as warnings and not for safety because, clearly, they’re not going to stop a vehicle from going right through them and down.
Anyway, gratefully safely down, I made my way over to get some gas, as I figured gas would be more expensive in the north end of the South Island because the towns are much smaller.
Then I headed over to the ferry, which, gratefully went well. Sometimes I get a little nervous because signs aren’t always the best, and the last thing I want is to take a wrong turn. But I was plenty early, so I guess that wouldn’t have mattered much anyway.
Chatted a little bit with the young woman at the ferry booth who seems like she wouldn’t have been opposed to me inviting her out, despite the fact that she was probably mid-20s.
Wouldn’t mind being 25 again after the last 20 years of my life feels like it’s been mostly a waste in the areas that were most important to me, including on the relationship front.
She directed me to lane 14, we’re a pulled to a stop very close to the vehicle in front of me, as per directed, and promptly, because it was completely light outside, forgot that I had my headlights still on when I turned my vehicle off.
😅
I’m used to keeping my key in the accessory position in order to continue giving power to my Wi-Fi signal boosting router thingy, so periodically, I’ll fire the engine back up just to make sure that I charge the battery up, and then I turn it back to accessory to keep being able to use the internet.
Well, when I went to fire up the first time, it did a couple of very slow cranks and then just the rapid fire clicking of a depleted battery trying to spin the starter bendix.
My first thought was that there was no way that I had been there long enough to deplete the battery, and then I remembered the headlights, and sure enough…
Ugh.
That was both embarrassing and a little concerning, as we’re all packed in, and my jumper cables are only like 3 or 4 meters long, so there’s not enough length to get to the car next to me, even if we were well positioned (perfectly side by side) to begin with.
I mentioned to one of the guys directing traffic in the lanes that my battery was dead, and I asked if he had a jump pack, and he said yes, but he was going to wait until the vehicles were leaving the staging area to actually get on the ferry.
That was both comforting and concerning, as I didn’t want to leave it until the last minute, so I popped my hood, took the battery cables off my battery, grabbed my jumper cables, and asked the van behind me if they’d be willing to charge up my battery. They were willing, but they had one of those campervans where the engine and battery are mid vehicle, and I didn’t want to inconvenience them too much by trying to figure out how to open up the battery compartment on the inside of their van.
Fortunately, right about that time, a family pulled up in the other lane next to me, and the look in the guys face gave the impression that he be totally willing to help, and he was when we started talking.
So he popped his hood, and I put my battery on the ground and hooked up the jumper cables to it and his car, and he fired up his car to get my battery charging.
Nice guy. He and his family were heading to the South Island for vacation, as it’s summer vacation here for the kids with school, and they were going to head down to Christchurch area for a bit and then up to Abel Tasman to do some more remote camping.
He was also an avid scuba diver, so we talked about some of the places he’s been, and I mentioned that I accidentally went to one of the more famous places in the world for both scuba diving and free diving (Blue Hole, in Dahab, Egypt).
After maybe 10 minutes of talking, I unhooked the battery from the cables, reinstalled it in my van, and she fired right up.
🙏
I thanked him and his family for their kindness and decided to leave my car running the rest of the time, as we were getting close to embarking (hope that’s the right use of the word 🙃).
I hung out on the upper viewing deck of the ferry for probably the first hour, enjoying the wind, albeit a cold wind, chatting with a college aged young man who was playing the guitar, and catching up a little bit on my journal entries.
I’ve been about a month behind. 😅
I snapped some pictures from the deck, and after I started getting a little chilled, headed inside, having left my jacket in the van (you can’t go back to your vehicle once they’ve locked the doors to the vehicle area)
Oh, while I was sitting on the top viewing deck, somebody’s hat and sunglasses blew off their head into a restricted area where people weren’t allowed to climb up to. The guy climbed up and grabbed the sunglasses anyway, but the hat was at the far end of the restricted area, so he just left it, and eventually, it blew over the back of the area and out of sight.
Once inside, I used the bathroom, and wandered around a little bit. I forget the actual order of events, but I killed some time watching The Tomorrow War, which I’d downloaded from Prime earlier, so I could watch it even without reception.
For whatever reason, I really like that movie. 🙃 I don’t often watch movies more than once, because I get bored re-watching movies, but I probably have seen that one three or four or five times. I just… enjoy it. 🤷
Wandering around the Deck 7 observation area, walking around the back side, what did I find?
The missing hat that had blown off the top and landed in the back!
So I wanted around the ship, going through multiple decks and many different areas until I finally saw the guy that I was pretty sure had jumped up and grabbed the sunglasses.
I went over to the table he was sitting at and asked if he had lost his hat, and it was indeed the guy who had jumped up to grab his sunglasses, but I guess there were two different people: one head lost his sunglasses and the other his hat, both at exactly the same time I guess with the same gust of wind?
Realizing that I had absolutely no chance of finding that guy, because I didn’t have the slightest clue what he might look like, I found an Interislander employee (who actually looked like he might have been the captain or part of the captain’s crew, given the uniform?) and gave him the hat, as there was no one at the information desk to give it to.
For probably the last hour of the trip, I headed back out to the outside observation area on Deck 7 to take in the views of the Tory Channel and other bays and whatnot.
Once disembarked, I headed over to a parking lot that Chase and I had stopped to rest at 3 years ago when we were here before. That time, we hit arrived at the South Island after a middle of the night ferry ride (it’s a nearly four-hour fairy). We had to tried to sleep on the ferry itself, but that was… challenging, so we naps a little bit in a parking lot next to pretty huge open green space that was near a small college, I think?
I didn’t nap this time, but I did spend a fair bit of time trying to plan where I was heading in the South Island, as I hadn’t really done much of any planning at all for the South Island to this point. 😅
I also did some online errands, paying credit card bills and whatnot.
Decided this time I was going to do the East Coast of the South Island first, as Chase and I really hadn’t done much of anything on the East Coast of the South Island last time except for stopping at a beach near Christchurch on the last day before Chase dropped me off at the airport that night.
But I’ve had multiple people tell me that Kaikoura is Topps on their list of favorite places in New Zealand, and going clockwise around the South Island this time, I’ll be in Kaikoura in a matter of days.
As I began the drive clockwise, I past another parking lot next to a small boat dock area, I believe, that I remember that Chase and I had stayed at last time. And I have a faint memory of picking up some trash and helping one of the very few people I saw with car problems during our first trip.
I think we had stopped there because there was a bathroom? And also to do some additional planning. We had originally thought about going clockwise around the South Island, I think, and then changed our minds and ended up going counterclockwise, so I think that was as far as we had gotten going clockwise, just a handful of kilometers, I think.
So I started the drive, a small windy road that went through neighborhoods at first, and then headed higher up into the small coastal mountains.
Periodically, I stopped to pick up trash along the side of the beautiful little road and to enjoy the views at the handful of lookouts.
I had noticed yesterday or the day before a massive blister on my left… ring finger toe?
The entire side of that toe was one massive blister, ended head split from the additional friction of the following days of walking after the Christmas Day Doom climb.
Aaaaaand… I noticed during one of those lookout stops that the blister skinned head split and had turned off had formed yet another blister on the ridiculously thin and sensitive skin that had also split and was half peeled off.
Lovely. 🙃
I have such messed up, mashed-together toes. 😆
So I finished tearing off the rest of the second blister and rolled up some toilet paper to shove between the toes to keep them separate, so they wouldn’t keep rubbing.
Don’t know if there’s much skin left to blister at this point, but I figured I’d do my best to prevent anything further. 😅
I stopped off and did some more travel planning at Oyster Bay.
Then did the same at Robin Hood Bay, along with texting my sister Heather and my friend Cory back and forth a bit.
I also spent quite a bit of time watching YouTube videos of commentary about the University of Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham stepping down and then getting hired by the University of Michigan.
Pretty nutty scenario. And I think there’s going to be a massive amount of fallout for both the University of Utah and BYU football programs, As I think the best coordinators from both schools are likely going to go with Coach Whittingham to Michigan, and potentially some of the best players from Utah and BYU as well.
Likely going to be tough times for both BYU and Utah football for the foreseeable…
Still, I wish coach Whitt the best. Crappy for the Utah schools, but it’s going to be pretty amazing for Michigan.
It was a cloudy, blustery day today. Super strong winds blowing pretty much constantly, so I stayed in the van pretty much all day.
Hungout for a little bit at Cloudy Bay and decided to stay at the Freedom Camping spot at the far end of a very long beach near the tiny town of Rarangi.
There was a cave, potentially with glow worms, there, but I would need to wait till after dark, and I was tired, so I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.
Sleep was near the top of the list. 🙃
I also didn’t want to get to the Freedom camping place too late and find it full, so I ended up driving maybe it doesn’t kilometers, or so, to the freedom camping spot, hanging out there for a bit, picking up a fair bit of trash, walking the half mile to the bathroom and back, and snapping some pictures of a beautiful sunset, before giving into the fomo and driving all the way back to the other end of the bay to explore the cave.
I had actually walked to the cave entrance earlier in the day, passing a wild plum tree, walking barefoot, making plum jam with my feet as I went because of how many plums were on the ground. 🙃
But because of my previous glow we’re experiences, I figured it would be best to come back at night, so when I finally decided I didn’t want to miss out on another potentially amazing experience, I headed back after dark.
Unfortunately, despite it being a little tiny town in a remote place on the east side of the island, there was graffiti everywhere, and only a small handful of glow worms. Maybe five?
There was, however, what looked like a baby penguin in there, so I snapped a few pictures of the cute little critter.
I then headed back to the freedom camping spot, as there was tons of room, being basically an open area with a dirt road next to a river that went to the ocean.
Got a message from the nice Australian woman I met at Kauri Mountain Beach northeast of Whangarei, and we chatted back and forth a bit before it was time to crash for the night.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 