From Waiheke to Taupō

As I arrive at Taupo a ray of sun brakes through the clouds and a bit of blue sky appears just before sunset.
For 2 days, a storms has been raging. This almost constant rainfall was a blessing to the inhabitants of Waiheke who had stood dry for 2 months, rationing the showers, the laundries, not watering the gardens. On Waiheke there is no public water supply to the houses. Everyone has their own reservoir and collects rainfall from their roof. Normally there’s enough to go around but this summer has been particularly dry.
After a glorious day around the island with my guide into Māori traditions Puawai Ormsby on Wednesday ...

The sky started to darken and rain was promised for the night. We waited. It came the next day, big time.
Puawai came over with some harakeke , the New Zealand flax, to teach me to weave. As the rain was falling outside the open doors, she taught me how and when to cut the harakeke. As the rain continued to fall, we prepared her leaves for weaving by removing the spines, splitting them and making them more flexible with the back of a knife. I wove a little bag to put my weaving stuff in. I also learned to spin the fibers into a rope and even to make the rope really thin.
I learned that you don’t combine weaving with eating or drinking. Eating and drinking are both grounding and weaving is about letting go. So you stop weaving, go wash your hands and have a bite or a drink away from your work area.
I learned about returning the leftovers to harakeke plants in a nice little package and to deposit it there with a thanking for use of the material and hoping the leftovers will help the plants grow further and provide again.
Now I can harvest harakeke along the road and do some weaving on my stops, just dreaming away.

This morning the wind had picked up seriously. As we arrived at the pier, we saw the ferry swerving away from the bay and disappearing behind the rocks. It wasn’t able to get into the bay because of the huge lateral waves and was returning to Auckland. They would try again at 12. It ended up being 1 before the waves allowed the ferry to reach the island. This all granted us a precious few hours for chatting just the two of us. Here are a couple of pictures of the view from the pub where we grabbed a hot drink.

She dropped me off at the rental company in Auckland and we both went our ways.
By then it was past 3pm. 5 hours later than planned. I wasn’t gong to make it to Wellington today.
I made a brief stop at a supermarket for some road trip supplies and started driving.
I reached Taupō just in time to check into the hostel before they locked the doors at 9pm.

So here I am, like the hobbits leaving the Shire, on my way for an adventure.