Hello everyone,
Well I’m safely back on the North Island and really have not done a great deal since I’ve been back. Had another mill-pond crossing on the 11th Feb of the Cook Strait from Picton to Wellington, arriving on the North Island about 1530hrs ish. So I wasn’t going to travel too far before stopping for the night. Set my trusty satnav for the NZMCA caravan park in Plimmerton which is probably about a 20 minute drive North of Wellington…..or so I thought. Now its been a wee while since I last updated my trusty garmin, so unfortunately it wasn’t au fait with the new roads which have been built on the way out of the City. Now without having previously looked at a map as I left it in the car on the ferry, I had a very rough idea where Plimmerton was so I put my faith in the satnav. Big mistake. Twice it led me to a road which wasn’t or rather no longer accessible so I had to go back down the State highway to start the trip again. On the third go I ignored the satnav and just went straight up the State Highway until I saw a sign, so my wee trip took just over 45minutes in all. Luckily I got one of the last places at the caravan site and I didn’t even bother unhooking the car, it was just a case of down legs, walk the dogs, grab a bite for tea, a couple of hours on the book, then off to bed.
Next morning it was off to Taupo, quite a long drive about 400 plus kilometers, on a very drizzly morning. The drive took the best part of 6 hours which included quite a few stops for coffee for me and a leg stretch for the boys. Ruapehu (if you recall from previous lessons, the highest mountain on North Island) still had a good dusting of snow on its higher reaches which I could just get the odd glimpse of through the cloud. Got to Taupo and the Equestrian Centre (my usual stop over place) about 2pm and after setting up the caravan for what I thought was going to be a 3 night stay I headed off to where my container and belongings were being stored. On arrival at the storage facility there were large chains a very industrial looking padlocks locking up the front gates, not a good look thought I, I wonder if the have gone bust and shut up shop. So with some trepidation I phoned the main office number to see what was going on, and was enlightened to the fact that they had shut the Taupo facility and my container was back in Whakatane. I do wish they would have told me this previously as I would have driven straight through rather than stopping. So rather than the 3 night stop it was just the one, and off to Whakatane/Kawerau it was the next morning. So arriving at the compound in Whakatane on the Wednesday afternoon, there was no-one around so I thought I would just go and sort out my bits I needed to get from it, when I discovered that none of the containers were marked. Now I had key 3 so logic to me seemed to dictate that it should fit container 3, this alas dear readers was not the case. So on the phone again to be told that my container was number 2 but my key wouldn’t fit it as I had a Taupo key and they had changed all the locks to Whakatane locks so my key was useless. So I had to return the next morning to pick up the correct key. Anyway I got what I wanted out of the container and arranged for the Sally Army to come and collect the rest, which they duly did on the Friday morning. So the upside to all that is that I’m saving myself $200 a month. But what a lot of hassle could have been avoided for the want of a single phone call, customer service people customer service.
So really for the past month I have just been pottering around the Bay of Plenty area I’ve just spent a week at Waihi Beach, and exploring the area around it. Waihi is a strange little town It got an open cast gold/silver mine right in the middle of it. It’s currently closed as they had a huge rock slide which has wiped out the access road down to the bottom of the mine, well over a million tons of rubble came down. But the people who own it have just gained permission to clear the slide and reopen the mine so it should be back in business by the end of the year. The actual are where I was at Waihi Beach was lovely and peaceful. Most of the holiday makers are starting to drift away now that summer has come to an end. It was good to re-introduce the dogs to the sea again.
In currently up the coast a bit now in Whangamata and will be staying here until Monday when I’m off back down to Rotorua to pick up a few things I need for my next adventure.
This brings me to the reason why this will be my last blog for a while. The time has finally come to make the jump across the pond to Australia. I’m hoping to be over there sometime towards the end of April or early May. I will be sending the dogs over a couple of weeks before I plan to go (to a really good dogs home in Blaxland) thank you Stu and Vicky, they packing up the caravan and shipping what belongings I have across, selling the car and passing on the caravan to a dealer to sell for me, before jumping on a plane. Once across the other side I will be buying another car and caravan and starting all over again.
So thank you all for reading my little offerings over the past 12 months or so, and hopefully it wont be too long until I update you all again as to what is going on.
As usual a couple of pics (not taken many lately) to end with
Geoff1511 Travels 