Before the day even began, we knew it was going to be a washout. None of that is entirely surprising given that it is winter in New Zealand, but the pounding sounds of a downpour throughout the night were unrelenting. For our first night, we slept surprisingly well — making it until nearly 630am. Our Air BnB inexplicably has no central heat, which means it is quite cold. We do have a wood-burning stove, which we have been attempting to keep going around the clock in an attempt to survive. We were pretty stoked to have a warm stoked fire.
For the remainder of the morning, we hunkered down in the BnB as rain assaulted the outside. Just before noon, we thought maybe the rain was calming down a little bit, but all this is relative. Nevertheless, we decided to brave the outside. There was a small trail at the end of the road that wove its way around the nearby cliffs. “Greg” and I chanced the trek in the still-persistent rain. Luckily, the trail itself wasn’t muddy, and sometimes the trees even afforded us a bit of aerial cover, but we still got quite wet.
Despite being thoroughly soaked, it was nice to get out and be able to see some scenery. Earlier in the day, the rain was so intense that we weren’t even able to see the hills in the distance. After returning to the shelter of the car, we decided to drive into the town of Piha. It is a coastal surfing town that has few buildings, but it did have some nice scenery. We stopped at a beach and explored the area on foot in what had now become just a light drizzle.
There were some nice prominent rocky hills jutting out at the edge of the water. Naturally, there was also a waterfall to check out nearby. I suppose there has been ample rain to keep it gushing for some time. Surprisingly, despite the rather chilly and wet weather, there were many surfers in the water. One plus of being here in such ghastly weather is that we were virtually the only ones on the beach.
It is sometimes nice to get away from a crowd — especially after dealing with a lot of people yesterday at airports etc. We spent a decent amount of time at the beach area until a rogue tide came in and soaked most of our feet with cold sandy water. We returned to the BnB to try and dry off and warm up. We made some meat pies and garlic bread that we acquired the previous evening at a grocery store called PAK’nSAVE. We have been making all of our meals here since there are basically no proper restaurants within 30 minutes.
We then relaxed for a spell while heavy rain returned to the area and we watched the second half of the Canada – Nigeria game taking place in Australia. It was sunny there evidently. As the sun went down on the horizon, it looked like some of the clouds might even be clearing just a little bit. Greg and I ventured back down to Piha to watch some semblance of a sunset.
It wasn’t too shabby considering the rather poor weather earlier in the day. I was admittedly a bit depressed when we arrived and “Greg” announced that he had been enjoying some glorious weather — only for that to take a rather drastic turn upon Bricole and Joelle’s arrival into the country. Even after the sun had set, the sky continued to illuminate in different colors and hues.
We returned to have a dinner of pasta, bread, and meat pies. “Greg” provided some beer that he bought in “Middle Earth.” He visited Hobbiton before our arrival. Having not seen any of these movies, I don’t know much about hobbits, but they do seem to make a decent beer for being so small. Tomorrow is game day, and we must head back to Auckland for the U.S. – Vietnam match. We will be staying in a proper hotel and will therefore be afforded (I assume) heat. Until then, we will be stoking and poking.
passports & pepto bismol 