(written on the 17th and 18th)
Let’s see…
I’m struggling to remember the day…
I was up early, of course. It rained on and off both last night and this morning, I think.
Was kind of funny… When I got back out of the cave last night, it was pretty much a cloudless sky, the Milky Way on display.
I don’t think it was 30 minutes later that it started to rain. 😆
I hung out inside my van until I think maybe a little after 10:00 this morning, doing my normal morning news stuff as well as deleting and reposting my van for sale, this time with a cheaper price.
Interestingly, Facebook required me to answer questions this time that it didn’t require the last times? 🤔
They were the normal questions you usually have to answer, but I’m just about certain that I didn’t have them as options the last two times I posted the ad.
After what happened today, that has me… wondering.
The ad showed that it was active each time I posted it previously, but there wasn’t a single message of interest and only single-digit views of the ad.
For a vehicle this cheap, that’s not…
🤔
After the new questions that came with posting it again this last time, I started getting a whole bunch of hits, pretty much right away.
Nice to get messages finally. 🙏
So I answered questions as I went about the day, stopping first in Whangarei to see about getting the vehicle transfer form in preparation for getting it sold.
I was only able to find the form that buyers use. Apparently the one for sellers is online?
Hopefully that’s the case. The lady behind the counter at the post office was super helpful and gave me the phone number for who to call to report the vehicle sold. 🙏
From there, I headed over to SuperCheap Auto, hoping both to dispose of my used oil and to maybe buy some coolant, if the price was halfway decent.
Unfortunately, that location wasn’t one that accepts oil drop off, but they did have a decently priced coolant jug, so that was good.
I figured that my next stop was going to be that little beach on Taupiri Bay where Chase and I had explored the tide pools and seen the octopi. When I first got to New Zealand this last time around, I went over to that Bay, but I hadn’t paid attention to the tides, and it was high tide, and the tide pools weren’t accessible.
This time, I was watching the tide schedule, so I planned my drive to get there at a time that would allow for exploration of the tide pools.
As I drove through the country roads, I eventually came to one of those construction stop lights that keeps everybody there until the safety vehicle can come back and lead you through to the other side of the construction area.
There were a few cars in front of me, and one young man standing next to the car in front of me I think munching on something. He was young and dressed in Sunday clothes, so I figured he might be an LDS missionary, a supposition confirmed when he moved just enough for me to see the plaque on his vest/jacket.
I called over to him for a little while. He was in a car with two other missionaries on their way to some activity or another. One of the missionaries was from Oregon I think? Another was from West Jordan, and another from Vanuatu, I believe it was.
We chatted for a little bit before having to cut the conversation short as the vehicles coming the other direction began arriving, which signaled our need to get ready to be on the move ourselves.
It was a beautiful drive through the winding Green hills. The North Island is so beautiful that way. Sure, it would look a lot different without livestock everywhere. Just about the whole island would be forest, so you wouldn’t get the gorgeous green hills with all their vivid contrasting colors that I love so much.
One of maybe only a few? positives of the livestock industry. 😅
Anyway, on I went, winding through the hills until I made my way down to the little pull out that’s only big enough for two cars.
Great place. 😊
You probably remember, but is also the place where I met my friend Maya, who’s now… MIA. 😅
Before heading on down to explore, I first took some time to clean out my van’s coolant overflow bottle, filling the bottle full of rocks, mud, and water and shaking it all around in an effort to scrape out the residue. Once it was reasonably decent, I rinsed it out, reinstalled it, and filled it full of coolant.
Since the engine was still hot, I didn’t bother opening the radiator cap to top off the radiator as well, putting the coolant jug on the driver seat to remind me to top off the radiator once I got back.
I spent the next two-plus hours wandering along the beach and scrambling around rocky formations where the tide pools are.
Brought back memories from my trip here with Chase. 😊
I remembered specific places I needed to boulder around, specific images locked in my mind…
Good times. 😊
Crazy to think that exploring this area happened during only our second day? in New Zealand last time. We packed so much into two months. 🤯
And I continue to be taken aback by how incredibly lucky we were. We seemed to arrive at the perfect time nearly every place we went. 🙏
Speaking of which, though I had made sure to arrive at low tide, perhaps it was simply that it was a different time of year? but there were no octopi. 😕 I’m fact, there were very few living creatures in general in the tide pools.
It’s fall… and winter is just right around the corner. So maybe that’s it?
Oh well. At least I got some pictures. 😊
Including the hill that I believe is the one that we climbed up last time trying to take a shortcut back to the car (a detour that ended up being a long, frustrating, exhausting, bushwhacking trip 😆).
I think I went just a little bit further than we did last time, and unfortunately, wasn’t ever able to identify the exact pools where we found the octopi three and a half years ago.
Oh well.
More pictures. 🙃
Since I was going to be driving back through Whangarei and stopping to get gas, I figured I might as well stop by one of the other places that’s sort of home to me–Whamgarei Falls. 🙃
As you can see from the picture, I actually walked the trail from up above down and then back up the other side and around. 😊
Hadn’t done that since doing it with Chase, I don’t think.
After getting gas in Whangarei, I drove back to Waipu Caves again 🙃, meeting this little guy on the way in.
Conflicting feelings about those little things. They’re cute as a button (what an odd saying 😶), But they are one of the main contributors the destruction of endangered creatures and habitats.
They’re non-native and have no natural predators, so humans are the only thing that keeps their numbers down, and there are an estimated 30 million of them in New Zealand. 😶
And that’s just one of several destructive invasive species.
Sometimes I want to be a part of the eradication efforts. But then when I look at them… 🥺
After entering the cave, I climbed up on that little ledge perch (that I have now commandeered as mine 🙃) and just stared up at the wondrous display of glow worm stars in the geode.
I thought I was the only person in the cave, but after being on the ledge for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, I saw someone wandering around with a dim light coming back toward me.
As the person got near, I asked how the experience of the cave was, and we got to talking.
Really cool 20-year-old woman named Livia from Switzerland. 😊
We talked for a while. And then kept talking. And then kept talking some more. 🙃
If it weren’t for the cold, we might have talked all night. 😆
As it was, we probably talked for maybe two hours? before calling it a night.
She hadn’t yet seen an eel, despite wandering around the cave for a good while before we met (probably because she was using the relatively dim light of her cell phone 🙃). Fortunately, as we were concluding our time in the cave, I was able to spot one. 😊 It was a really small, young one, but still an eel. 🙃
Incredibly, and I don’t even know how it’s possible, Even though she’d been in New Zealand for I think 6 weeks or two months or something like that, she had never seen an Australian possum. 😶
I see them absolutely everywhere. They’re roadkill on seemingly every street in New Zealand. 😅 And if you’re anywhere near the bush at night, you’ll see their glowing eyes reflecting back at you.
I bring up the Australian possums, because as we were leaving the cave, there was one in the grass next to the path back to the vans, and she mentioned she’d never seen one before.
Having multiple climbing around the trees before I went in the caves, I figured there would be more in the trees (the one we had just seen scampered through the grass away from us and out of sight).
Unfortunately, there were no possums in the trees right there, which was almost shockworthy. 😆
Fortunately, back in the parking lot, I wandered over to the woods on the other side and saw one, whisper yelling at Livia to over to see it.
Success. 😊
This time, instead of running away, it did what possums normally do. Stare at you with seemingly blank expressions. 😆
Thankfully, the possum stayed put long enough for her to take a picture or three. 🙏🎉
It’s funny, it didn’t dawn on me until maybe halfway through our conversation inside the cave that both her voice and vocal mannerisms were just about identical to my niece Katherine. 🤯
That was a trip! 🙃
It’s one thing to share a voice. It’s another thing to share the same vocal mannerisms. It’s pretty Mind-Blowing to share both.
Long lost sisters. 🙃
I Livia good night, veged for a bit, and crashed.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 