3rd Holiday Post

11th Nov, 2012

I missed writing anything for a couple of days because we were at my number three daughter's place, with her family.

We got up on Friday morning - still in Geraldine at that stage - and there was a drip coming off the tent in the front section, though it wasn't raining.  Turned out it was moisture running off the upper part of the door opening.  When my head touched the roof the condensation began to drip as well.  Celia was concerned about what it would be like in the rain, which is forecast for next week, but we dried the tent out in the sun in the end, and we'll have to see how it all works out.

We had breakfast in the camp kitchen and talked for some time to a young man from Idaho who is cycling around the country for three months.  He was going to Fairlie that day, a mere 80 kilometres.  Later in the day I spoke to a bloke who works for one of the electricity companies.  He was lying on the pebble shore in the Rakaia Gorge having his lunch.  He didn't think that long cycling days like that we're much of an idea since you had your head down all the time and didn't see much.  Apart from being exhausted by the time you got to your destination.  Anyway the young man had obviously been enjoying the trip.  He works in IT so can take three - or it might have been five months - off to tour.

After leaving Geraldine we weren't entirely sure that we'd taken the right road - we wanted the scenic route that goes through Glentunnel - but while we were stopped on the side of the road admiring the wonderful mountains, in the near distance, presumably the Alps, a man in his thirties drove up and stopped to ask if everything was all right. He assured us we were on the right track and that we could get petrol in Mayfield, which turned out to be only up the road.  I'd been a bit concerned that we wouldn't make it before we found a petrol station, having forgot to get petrol in Geraldine, so I was grateful for his concern.

After getting petrol in Mayfield, we stopped outside the village's Memorial Hall for a cup of tea, under the shade of an ancient tree - it was a wonderfully hot day - and Celia went for a trek to find the toilets. Though advertised as being close by this turned out to be much more difficult than the sign suggested.

A photo of the Rakaia Gorge as you approach it from the South.
It's a bit hard to get the whole picture of it; as usual I thought I'd
taken more photos than I had!

Our next stop was the Rakaia Gorge itself but Celia didn't feel much like walking at that point because it was so hot and her ankles had swollen somewhat with the heat and she was rather weary - neither of us have been sleeping well: at Geraldine the lights are kept on in the camping grounds all night and there's no real darkness as such. And, as I mentioned previously, the birds like to start singing loudly around 5 am. Anyway the Gorge was a beautiful vast open area with a surprising section of natural erosion where the cliffs had fallen away (the electricity worker said they'd been like that as long as he could remember though they looked like a relatively new scar).  Two bridges cross the two streams of the river coming into the Gorge, along with various other trickling creeks. Not much shelter there so we moved on, and anyway we couldn't light the gas there to make our lunch because of fire restrictions.  We eventually stopped on the south side of Glentunnel in a still unsheltered rest area, got the gas cooker out and made pikelets.   We used the golden syrup packs for flavour that we'd got when all the family went to MacDonald's a couple of weeks ago when the Christchurch family were down in Dunedin.  (One of these packs, the one that got left over, decided to trickle all over the inside of a bag of soups and meat flavourings, leaving everything sticky as.)  Drove on towards ChCh, passing my daughter's old place in Glentunnel, stopped for an icecream and milkshake in Darfield, and drove to my daughter's.  Greeted effusively by the kids and it was full on ever after!

Yesterday we took them out twice because, in part, my daughter had her first University exam for this semester, and in part because it was less exhausting outside than in!  Went to the Botanical Gardens which neither of us had ever been in much before and had a lovely open air time.  We didn't have the smallest of the three with us at that point because he went off to a birthday party with his dad, but on the second trip out, to the park along near their house, we had him as well.  He's as cuddly and smiley as he was in Dunedin, and talks full bore.  His sister, the middle child, who's only five and three quarters, is like a seven or eight year old...very sharp and bright.  Her big brother's no slouch either, so it's like being a house of super brains.  Celia showed my daughter's partner the book we'd got in Geraldine but even he was stumped by the first puzzle in it, although he picked up the idea of the puzzles straight away, as you'd expect him to do, and was soon doing them with ease.

We met up with our friend Heather for a meal last night at the Westfield mall in Riccarton, along with a couple from Dunedin who were up for a weekend of celebrations at their old church; it didn't seem as though they were having much celebration, though; all a bit dry by the sound of things.  Good to catch up with Heather; we'll see her again today for a family lunch celebrating her 60th birthday.  From there we went to see our dearest friends, people who used to live in Dunedin, but haven't done for many years. Within minutes of arriving we found ourselves invited to babysit their house at Christmas, which we were happy to do.  Their daughter arrived for a while with all four of her kids, which quickly demolished any sense of tidiness around the place, and then we watched an episode of Doc Martin on TV One. It turned out to be one we'd all watched on Prime previously, but proved surprisingly re-viewable.  Some viewing of photos from the last overseas trip and then back to my daughter's.