(written on February 18th from notes taken previously)
It wasn’t a very eventful day today, so there isn’t much to report, though it was another sad day in one respect. π But I’ll get to that later.
For whatever reason, perhaps the consequences of several days in a row of very little sleep, I woke up this morning absolutely hammered.
And after looking at myself via my selfie camera (I don’t remember why I did that), I had a pretty severe attack of self-consciousness, feeling extremely undesirable looking. π
Mornings probably aren’t the best time to be assessing one’s level of attractiveness π, but I just sort of had this wave wash over me as though no one would ever be interested in being with me because I was the polar opposite of attractive.
My face just felt…. puffy and saggy (I could literally feel my skin sagging, hanging from my face when I leaned over.
Pretty unsettling experience.
And a really rough start to the morning. π
After getting up, I moved the van over to the shade on the far side of the parking lot, as the ban was starting to bake in the bright morning summer sun.
After moving my van, Nick and I started eating breakfast, and we realized that Yani (a French girl and fellow whale rescue volunteer we’d been chatting with back up at Farewell Spit was parked just a couple vehicles over, so she came and joined us for breakfast, and we ate and chatted.
Cool stuff.
I really do love meeting people from all over. Such wonderful experiences.
After eating breakfast, I moved my van yet again to a spot closer to the river, and then I took my recyclable food containers down to the river to rinse out to take to the recycling center in TΔkaka.
As we were driving into town, I was reminded of a little place place just off the main drag that Chase and I had gone to 3 years ago. I think we had filled up our water there and Chase had maybe taken a shower there?
So instead of driving straight to the recycling center, I popped in there for a bit to show Nick, just in case he wanted to avail himself of the place.
What I didn’t realize was that the little place there also had a whole bunch of recycling bins, so we were able to recycle a pretty good number of the containers that we had, not all, but definitely a pretty significant number of them. π
We were also able, thanks to another person in the parking lot who pointed us to a working spigot (the first one we tried wasn’t usable) to fill all of our drinking water bottles. π
Before leaving the place, which included a local information center, I popped in to thank them for the resources that they provide for those of us traveling through, and then we drove from there over to the dedicated recycling center on the outskirts of town.
There we were able to dispose of all of the rest of our recyclables, and it’s there that Nick and I bid each other farewell.
I didn’t want to say goodbye. I was having a blast traveling with him, but he was going to be heading southeast and then back to the North Island, and I was going to be heading southwest, and it seemed like it would be forcing the issue to try and figure out a way to keep hanging out together, I so we snapped some selfies and bit each other farewell, and I started heading south.
My route took me back up and over TΔkaka Hill, through Motueka, following the Motueka Valley Highway all the way to my first real stop of the afternoon in Tapawera.
My stop in Tapawera was supposed to serve two purposes but ended up serving several. π
First, if I’m remembering correctly, I badly needed a bathroom and hadn’t wanted to pull over to use Micro John. π
Once relieved, I went inside the grocery store hoping to top up some supplies, but everything was more expensive than I was willing to pay for, so I skipped out on that.
Gratefully, there were trash bins next to the public bathroom at the end of the parking lot, so I was able to dispose of some of my trash, and then somewhat shockingly, in that same little area, there was a battery recycling station. πΆ
In my trash picking up efforts sometime long ago I had picked up a couple of lithium batteries, and they’ve been kicking around in my van ever since until today when, seemingly miraculously, I had a place to dispose of them free of charge! π
I spent a good little while hanging out in the car looking at my maps and places to go, if I’m remembering correctly. I was there long enough to need to use the bathroom again.
For pretty much the entire time that I was sitting there in the parking lot, there was an older lady with groceries next to her trying to hitchhike.
At first, I didn’t want to stop to give her a ride (I wasn’t quite feeling up to meeting yet another new person and feeling forced to socialize with them); but I reconsidered because she looked like someone just trying to bring her groceries home after shopping, so I walked over to her to ask where she needed to go, and it turned out that she was just a traveler who made her way around by hitchhiking and just so happened to have stopped off to buy groceries as well.
Given the nature of her circumstances, that she wasn’t just looking for a ride home after getting groceries, I bowed out of the opportunity to give her a ride, again just not not feeling up to try another small-talk, get-to-know-you-and-then-gone conversation.
So I continued on my way, pausing on the side of the road for a little while, I think to look at my maps a little more to try and figure out where I wanted to go.
However long I was there, it was long enough for that old lady to have managed to find someone to pick her up and give her a ride because as I found myself driving through another town further away, there was that same lady on the side of the road having beaten me to that town. π
Eventually, not knowing where else to go, I made my way over to Maruia Falls, which turned out to be another place that Chase and I visited last time. π
I chose it because it was both a freedom-camping location and a potentially beautiful waterfall.
It also turned out to be a sandfly giga factory, with enormous sand flies ready to slice you up and suck you dry. π³
π
After wandering around to take a few repeat pictures from my last trip here, trying to keep moving enough so as not to be drained of my blood and filled with histamineπ by the punk sandflies, I closed myself off from both the sandflies and the world (I locked myself in my van π), and though it was super early in the evening, was so exhausted that I was pretty much dead to the world for the rest of the night.
I know I veged out a bit. But I’ve got nothing more than that. π
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 