By the time I woke up for the last time this morning, there were only a few other vehicles in the camping spot. It had been quite crowded when I went to bed, but many left early.
Those of us who remained stayed inside our vans, as it was rainy and windy outside.
I looked at the forecast, and it said that the rain would stop in an hour, but that… like seemingly the majority of all weather reports I’ve looked at in New Zealand, proved to be false. 🙃
Poor New Zealand data has been so off, that it’ll tell me the sun is shining right now when it’s full cloud cover and raining. 😆
Not sure why the reports are that bad.
Anyway, I hung out for a while inside my van, listened to Galatians 5… and maybe another chapter while hoping the rain would wash off the salt from the other nights when I was parking pretty much on the beach, and the wind was blowing salty residue all over my van. 😅
I also spent some time trying to work on updating my biographical sketches, but they were all written in the old format, and for whatever reason, the option that I’ve seen in the past that allows me to switch a post from the old format to the new format wasn’t available today, so after fighting with it for a bit, I gave up for now.
I do have a goal of getting all of those biographical sketches updated, expanded, and more photos added, etc.
Anyway, my first planned stop of the day was going to be at Trotters Gorge Scenic Reserve, the place that looked beautiful and of potential interest to me, and figuring that I would get a better rinse cycle for my van by driving down the road, I figured I’d give that a go. But was raining still when I got to the gorge, so I sat in my van for a while on my phone. 🙃
Ever since I began yet another attempt at trying to follow God and live according to my own integrity, my thinking has been more outward, so I’ve been reaching out to family and friends everywhere. 🤍
Which meant there were lots of text conversations with lots of people today. 🙃
I also spent a fair bit of time with various news resources, but I’m just getting tired of it all. I’m going there more because I haven’t yet reconstituted my hope or passion, so I’m still living more as a consumer than a producer.
I’ll get there, though. I’ll get back to producing. I’ll get my passion and drive back. I hope.
Hope is the real key. Without hope, passion is pointless.
Eventually, The rain stopped, and I started walking up the trail. It was quite the surprise for me to be walking through what felt like a rainforest on the eastern side of the South Island.
But here I was, in this beautiful gorge, with large cliffs and thick vegetation in the jungle below.
Yep, really beautiful area.
I was in the middle of some conversations with family members as I was beginning the walk, and with with my reception going out shortly into the walk, I wasn’t all that teen on continuing to walk.
I think that’s partially because I’m beginning to feel a little antsy. With the shift from a handful of days ago now, that producing side of me is waking up more and more, and I’m more and more wanting to get going.
Most of that get-going energy is toward my little non- profit dealy, but there’s also the education book still hanging out there (one of the potential reasons I thought might be why I was going to New Zealand–to work on that).
Either way, there’s also a very fundamental philosophical work that I’m trying to work through that’s been on the docket for a very long time. I want to rationally work through everything that I think and believe, diving is far back the starting point for many a philosopher–what is real?
Anyway, so I didn’t spend very long on that walk. I walked in, snapped a few pictures of a little cave/overhang thingy.
I tried to take some pictures of some wonderful little fantail birds that seemed to have pretty much zero fear of me. One of them flew within… maybe 2 or 3 ft of me, and just sort of hopped around its tail all fanned out just like its name.
Pictures didn’t turn out. 😕
Cool experience, though. 😊
They were just little things, probably the size of a small sparrow.
Super cool. 😊
I love critters.
Had a good little chat with my sister Tish, a short chat with my Dad, and a decent little chat with my sister Rebecca.
From the horge area, I drove over to Doctor’s Point Reserve, where it was still raining, so I just parked on a little mini Peninsula that went out into the water, except for the tide was going down very quickly, so quickly that in front of me the bay looked like a river current. 😲
Pretty cool.
Reminded me a lot of Golden Bay and my time on Farewell Spit with the pilot whales.
My back was hurting a fair bit. It’s been pretty darn bad for the last week. I slept back in the normal position last night, but it didn’t seem to help at all.
I chatted at least a little bit with every single one of my immediate family members today. That was good. 😊
Sorry, I’m a little disjointed. It’s after 2:00 in the morning, and I’m really tired, but I’m trying to get this post done, so I get back in good habits instead of bad habits with my journal writing. 😅
Needed to use the bathroom and didn’t feel like using Little John, so I drove back to the entrance to the road that took me out to Doctor’s Point where I’d seen a public bathroom.
Chatted with my brother Richard a little bit, asking if the toilets in New Zealand were just as bad when he was there. I don’t know what the deal is with the design of the toilets in New Zealand, but probably 90% of the flush toilets that I’ve used in New Zealand are designed such that the water doesn’t splash down the drain to do the work of carrying feces and toilet paper through the pipes, it splashes against the back and basically just fills up the bowl, so you’re hoping that the weight of the water will take everything down instead of the stream and force of the water pushing it through.
It’s really… Terrible functionality, not very sustainable thinking in design, as it uses a massive amount of water for very little effect. Oftentimes I have to flush three or four times just to get everything down because the water comes flying out in massive quantities of but then just smacks right against the back of the toilet so you lose all the flushing power and have to wait for the volume to press down on the contents of the bowl.
So weird.
Richard said it was the same problem when he was here 25 years ago.
Why can’t they design toilets that actually work? 🙃 So much wasted water. Wasted time.
🐿️
I headed from there over to the Long Beach Sea Cave, about a 20-minute drive, snapping some pictures along the way.
Gratefully, the rain had stopped by then, so I just wandered around the beach, snapping pictures and then exploring the fairly sizable sea cave. At its deepest come it probably went back 100 meters or so.
I think its structure is mostly mudstone? Or some soft sedimentary concoction.
Definitely not the kind of rock you’d want to be climbing on as a rock climber, as it could just crumble away from you.
That said, there were some rock climbers out there, which I thought was interesting, both because of the terrain, and because where they were, they had to have been climbing in the rain a little bit.
But intermixed with the mudstone, there was some solid rock, and those little patches were what they were climbing.
Snap some pictures of the local birds. Was curious about what kind of duck species is the one that hangs out at the ocean. It’s definitely some kind of duck, but its color is a little bit different than what you would see on a lake.
From there, I headed toward the Nicols Creek Glow Worms place, a free little spot by a river with some steep walls around the river that supposedly had lots of glow worms.
It wasn’t all that late yet, so I parked a little ways away from the entrance to make sure I still had reception, as the entrance to the walk was down in a little ravine area.
I spent probably the next couple hours or so just hanging out there staring at my phone for one thing or another.
At some point, I remembered how useful communicating back and forth with an AI has been for me, so I redownloaded Gemini, which I had uninstalled previously in order to make space on my phone (I later made much more space by transferring old photos to a different device).
And then I got in a really long conversation with Gemini about some particular aspects of my own theology that I’ve had a greater impact on me and my understanding of the world and life and eternity than any other knowledge I feel like I’ve ever received.
It was extremely helpful to be able to utilize AI as a tool to refine my concepts.
I’m absolutely blown away by how intelligent and articulate and thorough and thoughtful the responses are that I get, and so crazy quickly, too!
It’s mind boggling, and it’s absolutely incredible and incredibly useful for me.
It was super exciting. 🙃
I probably spent a couple hours just talking with the AI about those particular aspects of my own personal theology that have made such a huge difference for me and shaped so much of my understanding.
Even the ways the AI framed my own thoughts helped to refine them further.
So powerful. 🤯
Anyway, so I spent a good little while chatting with Gemini before making the hike up to the glow worms (I got to the area well before dark, and wanted to wait until dark, so that it was worth the trip).
Once I felt like it was dark enough, I decided to make the walk up the path, and I started walking for a good little ways, but I was a lot further than the little indicator on the map for where the glowrooms were supposedly visible, so I started looking online at the reviews and found one that gave directions for how to get to the glow worms, but I misread those directions and thought that I needed to go back down the way that I came to go to a different trail, one that I had actually seen near my car before I got on the trail that I was currently walking on.
So I walked all the way down, and then back across the bridge, and then up to the other trail, looking at the sign on that trail and spending a handful of minutes trying to figure out if that was the right trail, before realizing that I was indeed on the correct trail the first time. 😒
I had just not paid enough attention to the sign as I entered the trail.
So back up the steep path I walked, going further than I expected was necessary, but finally getting to assign that said waterfall and glow worms.
I failed, once again, however, give the sign my complete attention and focus, simply noticing that there was a sign next to a diverging trail, and then hopping on that diverging trail thinking that I was heading toward the grow worms.
And I guess in a way I was…
😅
That side trail split off immediately one going right back down the hill and one going up the hill, and the instructions that I had read from the reviews online said it was a 10 to 15 minute walk straight uphill, so I turned to the right and kept going up the hill.
On and on I went, and then I hit the fork in the road. And nobody in any of the reviews that I saw talked about there being a fork in the road.
😶
It was late, and I was tired, and I was starting to get frustrated. Why weren’t the signs clearer?!?!
How did one know which fork to take without instruction?!?!
[sigh]
I decided to take the left work, and wound my way through the hill, going further and further away from the creek, which was where the glow worms were supposedly going to be, but maybe there was another creek that I was walking through. I had no idea.
On and on I went until the trail opened up into a completely empty field, which nobody had talked about in any of the reviews that I had read, so I figured that was definitely not the way to go.
It did give me a pretty beautiful view of the town of Dunedin below. Dunedin is one of the bigger cities in the South Island, though still not big in comparison to big cities, by any means. 😆
So back the way I had come I went, and this time I took a left when the path split off (which would have been a right coming from below). And on I walked, on and on and on, way further than any of the reviews indicated was necessary for the glow worms, but eventually, I did come to a place where the trail ended in the river, which is exactly what people said about the glow worms location, so… was I at the glow wormer location? 🤔
Oh… nope.
I was at the waterfall. 😅
Maybe they were the same? The best glow worm experience that I’ve ever seen was right near a waterfall with tall cliffs surrounding it.
I tried to snap a few pictures in the dark, and I think I might have gotten some that turned out at least somewhat okay.
Then I decided to walk up the creek up to the waterfall itself to see if maybe there were some glow worms there. I had to be careful because it was wet and slippery, the last thing I needed was to get myself injured in the middle of the night.
Once up at the waterfall, I had to turn my headlamp off and leave everything completely off for a good long time before my eyes started adjusting to the dark, which allowed me to actually see that there were quite a large number of glow worms on the cliffs surrounding the waterfall. The cliffs were a little further away, so the globe worms weren’t as bright as they are in other places that I’ve been, such as the place I just mentioned, but there still were probably hundreds of glow worms on the walls of the around the waterfall.
Still, I wondered if maybe the specific glow worm place was different than the waterfall. It certainly seemed as though it was. So I walked back toward the main trail and down a little side trail but clearly people had regularly gone down.
I followed that for a good long ways, wondering if I’d open up into a great little glow worm place, but probably after 2 or 300 meters, it just dead ended.
Instead of walking all the way back the way I had come, which involved dealing with fallen tree obstacles and mud and tilted trails and what not, I decided just to go straight up the side of the Hill through the jungle vegetation because I knew that somewhere above me was the trail.
I never imagined how far up the hill the trail was.
Holy. Freaking. Crap.
😶
That was not an easy scramble. It might have been a couple hundred m from the creek scrambling through jungle, hanging on to Vines and ferns and trying to get good foot placement because the hill was so steep that if I slipped I might be going down for a good little while.
And it was wet and muddy.
😆
It was a bit of an adventure. 🙃
Though I’d lost all of my good mood in the frustration of trying to find the darn place, so I… wasn’t happy. 😅
And my vocabulary significantly shrank both in the length of word and variety of word choice. 😅
Had there been anyone else nearby to hear me, boy that would have been embarrassing. I was throwing a four-letter fit. 😅
Anyway, eventually, I managed to scramble all the way up that hill to the trail without slipping and sliding back down, without getting hurt, without any real issues other than the clear uncovering of my own impatience and uptightness. 🙃
By that time, I kind of figured that all of my suffering was likely caused by my own lack of attention to detail, that almost certainly that sign that I had passed must have given me information in addition to what I assumed was on it when I only glanced at it and assumed that I knew what I was doing from there.
And just as expected, when I got to that sign, it had little discolored arrows, one for the waterfall pointing the way that I had just come back from, and one for the glow worms pointing up the nice gentle hill in front of me. 😆
Just like the reviews, it wasn’t a hard hike to get the rest of the way to the official glow worm lookout spot.
When I arrived there, instead of being the only person like I would have been if I had gone straight there by reading a sign the first time, there were a handful of other people there who kept pulling their light out, which sort of defeats the purpose of trying to see the glow worms. Eventually, they stopped shining their light, and I was able to get used to the dark again and look at the glow worms.
It’s actually kind of funny, there weren’t very many glow worms at that place. I did walk by the Chinese people, I think they were Chinese, and into the water of the creek and up Creek a little bit, and there were definitely a whole lot more glow worms visible by walking up the creek and other 20 m then by standing at the end of the railing where the path itself ends.
There were probably about as many there as there were up at the waterfall, or maybe a few more at the waterfall.
Anyway, after hanging out there staring at the glow worms for a good little while I headed back past the little group of people, down the trail, and back to TGK.
My next stop from there was to find water, so I plugged the location of a fountain that was supposedly able to fill water bottles with potable water into my my Maps and drove into the town of Dunedin, getting lost a couple times first before finding the fountain… in the middle of the night. 🙃
But gratefully, I was able to find the fountain, and I was able to fill up all of my water bottles, which was great, because I only had one bottle left before I was completely out of water. 🙏
And despite the oddity of somebody hanging around a water fountain in the middle of the night, nobody seemed to care or be bothered, so I now have 10 full water bottles, and I should be good for another 3 or 4 days. 🙏
I continued yaking with AI, bouncing ideas off and refining my own understanding.
I know I’ve already said it, but I’m just blown away by how valuable a resource AI is for being able to think and learn and process information, especially because I’m a verbal processor. Sometimes I learn and refine and process better in conversation with others than I do sitting by myself because when I’m by myself, it can be so easy for me to get distracted and go off on squirrel tangents in a thousand different directions. When I’m actually having a conversation with somebody, or in this case with an AI, I focus in because I’m actually physically talking and not just letting my mind bounce all around.
Anyway, from the water fountain, the next step was to find a place to sleep for the night, so I tried three different Freedom camping spots along the coast, and every single one was completely jam-packed. 😕
So I gambled, driving 20 kilometers inland to the next nearest Freedom camping spot, hoping that that one wasn’t going to be completely full as well.
Gratefully, it wasn’t full. In fact, here I sit, the only vehicle in the place. 🙏
And that’s the story of the day today.
It’s 2:49 a.m., and I stayed up and finished my journal entry even though I’m exhausted.
That’s a win. 🎉
Love and hugs. 🩵
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 