On the penultimate day of our house-sit, we drive to Hamilton to see Mark and Wendy for the last time before we leave New Zealand. Wendy books lunch at a lovely Tapas restaurant on the river and we tuck into dishes of fish, arancini and dahl and talk around politics, families, places to live. It’s a treat to spend time with this interesting, warm-hearted couple and, if we only made two new friends on our travels, I’d be glad if they were them.
We also talk about the cyclone devastation of Hawkes Bay and Gisborne, places that we visited only a couple of weeks before. Houses have been swept away, others filled to the ceiling with silt, the vineyards have been submerged and seven people have died. The slash from the logging industry, always a problem in the area, has taken out vital bridges and dumped itself on the beaches. Thousands in Hawkes Bay are still without electricity and others are missing. It puts our brief loss of power and water well and truly into perspective.
Our last morning in Te Aroha is spent on chores, making sure that Anna and Leon return to a tidy house and garden and that the chickens are all in good order. The hens are still not laying well, but there are at least some eggs to leave for our hosts’ return. We’re doubly glad of our efforts when we learn that their ferry crossing from the south island is delayed and they won’t see home until the early hours of the following morning. In the afternoon, I indulge myself with a massage at the Te Aroha Domain, although such is the state of my knotted leg muscles from so much hill running that it’s really more of a painful necessity than an indulgence.
I return to find that we’ve been invited by the neighbours, Judy and Michael, for a cup of tea . . . at 6.45pm. We walk several hundred metres up the mountain to find their dodecagon-shaped house sitting in, and surrounded by, the forest reserve. Everything about the visit is unusual: the house, which has no rooms, the very white European Michael’s claim to be part Maori, the presentation of his artwork – he specialises in Hobbit houses and landscapes – accompanied by a mini lecture on New Zealand history, native trees and several other vaguely related subjects. They both talk non-stop and pull out more paintings while we nod and search for comments. As we return down the mountain, we both feel stunned. And very hungry.
And then next morning, we feed the chickens, pack up and leave. We can finally head north through Auckland into Northland and on to One Tree Point where we’ve rented a bach on the shores of Whangarei Bay. This is the sort of experience we’ve been expecting ever since we arrived in New Zealand. The weather is warm, dry and still. The cyclone has certainly swept through here but, by now, the only evidence of it is the top of a yacht’s mast showing above the water.
The lawn of this bach runs down to the bay and there’s a jetty for swimming and launching the kayaks that come with the house. We no sooner settle with our cups of tea on the deck, than the very friendly neighbours ask if we’d like some smoked snapper. We certainly would, and we wander over to watch Graeme (who in fact owns the bach we’re staying in) pull from his smoke box the snapper that he and his friend caught only yesterday. This is a tasty introduction to the warm friendliness of the people who live here.
Thursday dawns sunny and warm and we’re so excited to have good weather that, by the end of the day, we’ve completed an iron man triathlon . . . only in the wrong order and with ant sized distances. We take a run around the bay, jump off the jetty for a swim and, after lunch, wheel the bicycles out of the garage for a ride. By supper time, we’re both knackered and wondering what there might be left to do tomorrow. Then we find Netflix on the telly – yay! – and pick up a nordic series that we started about a month ago. We spend weeks at a time with nothing to watch, so this is a rare treat. The only difficulties we have is remembering what happened in the previous episode and staying awake long enough to catch up with the next.
