Wiatomo Walkway

 

NEW ZEALAND
Day 25 12/10/97
Wayward Bus

Day 26 12/11/97

Great Coast Road

Day 27 12/12/97

Twelve Apostles

Day 28 12/13/97

Melbourne/Auckland

Day 29 12/14/97
"Kiwi" Experience

Day 30 12/15/97
Aotearoa

Day 31 12/16/97
Raining Cats & Dogs

Day 32 12/17/97
Panning for Gold

Day 33 12/18/97
Glacial River

Day 34 12/19/97
Sun has Come Out!

Day 35 12/20/97
Bungy Jump

Day 36 12/21/97
Church of Good Shepherd

Day 37 12/22/97
Kaikoura

Day 38 12/23/97
Ferry Across Channel

Day 39 12/24/97
Christmas Eve

Day 40 12/25/97
Rotorua

Day 41 12/26/97
Boxing Day!

Day 42 12/27/97
Wiatomo Walkway

Day 43 12/28/97
Black Water Tubing to View the GlowWorms

Day 44 12/29/97
End of "Kiwi Experence"

Day 45 12/30/97
Adelaide

Day 46 12/31/97
Glenelg Beach

Day 47 1/1/98
DDay Departure Day

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Sat. December 27, 1997

Day 42

We set our clock for 8:00 a.m. I got up earlier to catch up on my journal. We packed up our backpacks and put them in storage. The bus was due at noon so we had a couple of hours. Andrew humored me by returning to the Internet café by way of a sidewalk café for breakfast first. I had realized during the night I had not called in the Pop mail the last couple of times and that must be why I seemed to have some holes in information from home. Sure enough that was the case. We had a lot of messages to catch up on and Andrew read along with me. The messages had been confusing because I was getting mail to Hotmail and to Softdisk and was thinking I had already read them when I hadn’t. Back at the hostel we sat out in the sun at a picnic table and snacked and read until the bus arrived. I was reading The Chamber by then.

The ride to Wiatomo was only a couple of hours. It was rural scenery and very pretty. We arrived about 2:30 p.m. We are staying in a YHA hostel here that is actually the back part of a very old and scenic hotel. We made reservations for caving tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. We took off on what would become a three-hour "bush walk" on the Wiatomo Walkway. We were actually hiking a trail through cow pastures up and over hillsides. We ended up at ----- Cave which was closed but we did a 30 min climb and walk around the caves and rivers. We saw a group floating down the river on their innertubes. We had passed the take out point walking up. There were kiosks explaining a lot of detail. Suspension bridges and long sets of wooden stairs where built throughout the walkway there. It was pretty scenic stuff. I was pretty tired and my foot was protesting again. The paths through the pastures were plenty uneven and rocky and that’s my difficulty. It was just great to be outside on a sunny day again. We had our bearings coming back and hiked down to the road to get out of the pastures, which allowed me to get back on flat land. It also saved us a big climb up a hill. It was a lovely evening. I really like having daylight till 9:30 p.m. or so. I won’t like the early dark when I return home again. We went to our little café and sat outside on the patio and ordered dinner. I had a wonderful little pizza and Andrew had fettuccini. It was nice to leisurely sit and converse. These are some of my favorite moments with Andrew. We don’t have to watch the clock and nothing is pressing and I enjoyed these times so much!

We returned to the hostel and I sat out in the back on the hillside until the sun was too low to shine on me. It turns pretty cool almost exactly at that point. I found Andrew watching TV in the lobby. We’ve watched TV so seldom that it seems foreign. They had on a news show like Dateline or such New Zealand style. I quit when the Red Neck Wrestling came on. I can do that at home!! I returned to snuggle in and read till the wee hours.