the start of a new month already and more bad news, our dear friend Michael has died. How we shall miss him at les Combes….
Where were we now when we last left off? Yes, stuck in the airport hotel at Nadi. We took a ‘sailing boat’ (old scow) trip on our extra, extra enforced day in Nadi to get away from the hotel and see one of the pretty mystery islands at the beginning of the Mamanuca chain. The island is a perfect circle of palm and rainforest with a white sand beach and a coral reef. A covered bar and eating area and some hammocks. The day improved our spirits with a snorkel in the warm sea, a good lunch plenty of cold beer and Fijian singers.
But heh, losing it does help and we have been refunded 800Fiji by the airline and finally got away from Fiji to Tonga for just 2 nights and one day. What a lovely simple beach resort it was and how sad we were not to have been able to have our full week there. A cold beer, a stunning ocean view and smiling Tongan staff and we were partly restored to normality…. Only one other family there so we spent our ‘day’ walking the beach, snorkelling and just lying in hammocks (that’s us on Tongan hammocks) listening to the surf. In the night it rained heavily, but not enough to stop our return to the airport – this time a civilised airline – Air New Zealand . It felt like coming home to arrive in Auckland just 3 hours later.
Et in Arcadia sum!
Steph and Stu were waiting with a name board and handed over Joline and Darl’s car to us. They are the neighbours of the couple who are staying in La Vallee while we are away. The deal is that we have their car to drive to Rotorua for our visit with the exchange couple with the camper van and then bring it back and spend a week in their home at Auckland for our last week in NZ. So after a few days in Rotorua with Kath and Sam’s in their beautiful home we took off in this huge van with so many mod cons it reminds us of living on CHICA without having to worry every night whether the anchor will hold…… It is a joy to be here in a temperate climate – just 24C and NOT humid~! So far, we’ve done the beautiful East Cape area and now send this blog from the heart of the Coromandel peninsular, which is pretty much one huge nature reserve. Yesterday we did an epic 4 hour tramp along the remotest part of this coast, with a 1.5hr transfer each way on gravel roads (our camper can’t and won’t go there). Quite a few “alternatives” from the sixties never made it further away than here.
Most nights we were ‘free-camping’ (not on camp sites’ and only feet from the crashing surf of the Pacific. Often the only people for miles and it was hard to gauge the length of the beaches. Hard, golden sand great for long, long walks in the surf, after climbing over banks of driftwood – not just the odd branch, I mean tree trunks, logs, twisted roots – all bleached in the antipodean sun. A wood sculptors paradise and indeed we saw many an ad hoc artistic arrangement in our rambles. The towns, if one can call them that, resemble the wild west; mostly wooden with verandahs and tin roofs. Here the shops and signs display the Maori language alongside English and there were one or two places where we felt distinctly unwelcome. Dusty little hamlets appear in the clefts between these endless emerald hills, the mountains clad with Manuka and tree ferns and round every corner another glimpse of the blue pacific and its noisome surf. Te Aroroa – the land of the long white cloud – so aptly named as the cigar-shaped cumulus sit in serried ranks along the ridges. One memorable evening we ate with a young French couple travelling in the opposite direction. They had met on the internet only a couple of days previously and were sleeping in the car (they’re young). Melissa approached us to ask if we would like to share the fresh fish they had been given. Spurred into action we broke out the BBQ, chairs and table and set up a veritable feast right on the seashore. The Hoki was delicious and their company envigorating. It was good to speak French after so long without and they were relieved not to have to speak English! Turns out they have been through Najac, so, small world. The East Cape is a wild and wonderful place to visit and we have many recommendations for anyone wishing to go there.
We need to be back in Rotorua in a couple of days, just as soon as we’ve dug our own personal hot water thermal bath on the beach at low tide. You can’t move a mile here without hitting a volcano but the locals all seem quite unfazed. Shame about Christchurch though, they’re still getting hit.
We hear the temperature in Najac is down to -7C today and falling and that Dorset and Devon have had snow. It still feels strange to be in the sunshine in February.
Nous ne regrettons rien!
