Can you explain to me why you look a certain direction at a particular moment in time??? I looked down at my gauges and saw my milage at 011111 at precisely 1:11….Great Scott!! When we rode through Foxton yesterday my tunes were playing "Fox on the run"..di do di do…shoot I'm dating myself now! I have to share this with you…Glancing across one of the many cow packed paddocks I caught a cow picking up a plastic bottle in her mouth then spitting it out what are the odds of that?. As weird as that sounds, this is practically the only rubbish that I have seen in this beautiful country no wonder she spit it out!
It was overcast this morning as we headed over to the Thermal Pools. It happened to be their cleaning day so the pools were half price. Kev and I were the only ones there and we had the whole place to ourselves, well minus the Kiwi pool guy. The pool guy was pressure washing the lower cool pool in his speedos and we enjoyed the upper hot pools, me I enjoyed the speedos…just joking! Apart from the noise of the pressure washer it was purely tranquil. The waters were so blue and clear, almost like a "blue loo" color, minus the loo!! This was the color of the water not the pools themselves. A smooth frosted/iced cake like calcium build up covered the overflows from the natural thermal springs into the pools spillways where the waters flowed into the pools. We soaked for a couple of hours, Kev always with a book in his hand! A funny thing happened though…there was a bridge over the actual thermal spring that fed the pools, and I had been looking at it wondering how we could get up there. Then all of a sudden out of the thermal vapor a group of people appeared!! Apparently there is a nature walk that takes you via the pools…ha ha ha…wow talk about feeling like a zoo animal being viewed! What do you do??…Flips of course!
A very relaxing and interesting morning!
Hungry we decided to ride towards the lake via Huka Falls which looked like a Blue Heaven Milkshake. We found a shady spot pulled out our rye crackers, cheese, fruit and wine and enjoyed a light lunch. We fed the noisy gulls and one Mallard grapes…it is a pretty funny sight to see about 10 gulls and 1 old duck with grapes in their beaks/bill…we laughed!
The ride into the Hawke's Bay town, Napier…the "Art Deco Capital of the World" was brilliantly comfortable. We are over on the west coast now, and I am starting to get pleasantly dazed and confused as we continue our journeys on the North Island!! Much of Napier was destroyed by an earthquake and fire in 1931, (like San Francisco!) and was rebuilt with the optimism of the roaring 20's and idealism of the 30's…personally my fav era. We stayed in this old hotel called the Masonic Hotel that had old french doors from your room that lead out onto the roof. It was pretty dated but the history and architecture was really cool. The Masonic was directly across the road from a black pebbled beach…we plan to get up tomorrow to see the sun rise?
With no alarms set I woke up in total darkness wondering where I was…don't you hate that? Luckily I did not run into the wall, which I usually do!…ha ha ha. All I could remember is that we are somewhere in New Zealand and that I wanted to see the sun rise here. They make those "black out" curtains so dark and this room was totally funky, light switches were not where they should be…you know the feeling!
I pulled back the curtains to see a clear crimson sky…Wow! It was about 6:15 am, I think that we have to hurry out if we want to catch the show! We pulled on some clothing, grabbed the camera and hurried out of the hotel, walked across the street onto the dewy black pebbled beach and found a pice of drift wood to plant ourselves on. We waited, and waited…shivered, and waited…and when our toes were numb from the morning chill. Ra finally appeared it was around 7am! She did not disappoint…What a fantastic start to a day!