Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

And so the weather continues.

Today we should have been exploring the beautiful Bay of Isles with over 100 islands surrounded by clear blue sea. But all boat trips are cancelled because of the wind and the visibility is about 10 feet so not much point anyway.

Holly our leader is not one to let a bit of rain stop her so she devised an alternative itinerary for the day for us – the Holly and Simon Tiki Tour. Most of the group were on the bus for 10:00 for a trip to the nearby hot springs. These are fairly basic, run by Maori who own the land. For your $4 entrance fee you get a choice of about 15 pools, each about 2m square, ranging from warm to very hot; the smell of bad eggs is thrown in for nothing and hangs over everything. The water is dark grey; you can’t see your hand when it’s just below the surface. The rain continued while we sat in the pools making interesting splashes on the surface.

We returned to the camp for a quick shower before our next adventure – a visit to the town of Kerikeri. The main site is the oldest building in New Zealand, built in 1836, but it’s out of town and the rain had now become torrential so we gave it a miss and went to the Village Cafe instead. Florence had poached eggs on toast; I had a pumpkin salad – with a flat white. Lonely Planet recommends sitting in the pleasant courtyard but we stayed inside.

After lunch we took a walk along the high street, the rain had now gone up a level – tropical? Biblical? Water was overflowing the sides of the road onto the pavements; fortunately the shops have large canopies along the front so we kept out of some of it. We went into one shop to browse, a very loud alarm went off down the street, the shop owner didn’t seem worried, she explained it’s probably a traffic accident so they’re rousing the volunteer fire brigade.

We found a nice looking cafe for afternoon tea then set-up camp in the local library for an hour – free wifi and local books to peruse. The wifi took ages to get going so we never made it back to the café.

The rain stopped at about 4pm so we had a quick look up and down the high street, a sculpture in the window of a gallery appeared to be beseeching the rain gods to stop. Another gallery had some colourful abstract works by an artist from Sicily. The skate park was flooded, it was being used for cycling and swimming.

Back at the camp the river was now about a metre higher than yesterday evening, logs, bushes and what looked like a whole tree rushed past in the torrents.