Stormy
Well, the last story was posted when we were sunning ourselves on Tokoriki. Since getting back to Napier last Thursday it's been about 2c maximum the whole time! We've kept the fire going pretty much whenever we're awake because it's been so cold.
Our last night on Tokoriki was our seafood dinner night. It was very tasty, even for me not liking seafood much. Then I got a little "Happy Birthday" song and cake and all that jazz, it was pretty cool. But I couldn't eat my cake having just had a 3 course seafood dinner thingy. The next morning we packed up ready to check out, but they were nice enough to let us stay in our room until 2pm or so, because the ferry wasn't coming to get us until 3. We did a bit more snorkelling straight off the beach, even though it was low tide we still got to see quite a few fish and other interesting creatures. It wasn't quite as good as the day before, but because it was a nice sunny day the light made everything look a bit more interesting.
Eventually it was time to say goodbye and we got on our ferry and were out of there. The ferry ride back took ages, stopping at every other island before dumping us back at the port. At least the Ferry had wifi, which of course had the admin interface wide open for me to have a play with (I didn't break it!) We got to the port, found our bags and had a look around for a while, getting some dinner while watching a very drunk man dance to music badly, waiting for a huge black rain cloud to ruin our evening (it didn't) and then getting a bottle of the world's most disgusting hot sauce to put on my pizza. Ugh. After dinner we got a cab to our hotel, the "Ratsun". Most people kept thinking we were saying "Radisson" so that took a bit of explaining. Our taxi driver was terrible, tail-gating and doing all those things that are a nightmare when you're a passenger. Glad we made it alive.
The Ratsun was a fairly basic hotel, just somewhere to sleep for the night which is all we needed. The next morning we got up and grabbed a cab to the airport, our cabbie had spent some time in Napier driving Taxi's so that was nice to have a chat to him about. The airport was it's boring self, until we cleared customs and suddenly WOW. It's been totally done up from last time we were there. It was amazing. Bright lights, lots of shops and stalls. Clean etc. Really amazing! We got a coffee while we waited to board our plane.
We made it into Auckland, got our bags and then caught the bus over to domestic, had some lunch and sat around before our flight back to Napier. Waiting to collect us was Granny, Beth and Theo. Beth could hardly contain her excitement while Choppers just looked very happy. But he always looks very happy so hard to know what he was thinking!
Thursday and Friday was back to work, ugh. I got my new laptop on Thursday which is a lovely new Dell thing with 32G of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Pretty impressive specs for 2016, I wonder when I look back on this in 10 years how laughable they'll be.
Saturday was swimming, at the new 8:30am time. We drove over in the utterly pouring rain and got Granny, then went to swimming. Beth did a good job at her swimming, then Theo enjoyed his. We came back home, dropped Sarah and Theo off then Granny, Beth and I went to get coffee/breakfast at Orbit. We'd just ordered our Coffee when the power went out, for the second time. It'd gone out at 2am or so for ~4 hours. This time it stayed out for another 2 hours. During which time Sarah burnt her hand on a very hot milk jug we'd heated up on the woodburner. I forgot to tell her just how hot it was. Oops. Thankfully it wasn't too bad. I took Beth and Theo up to the library but it was closed (due to the power cut) so we walked around Taradale for a bit.
Sunday we went to the Market, but again the rain made the whole experience pretty miserable. We came back and I managed to wash then tumbledry a poo. There was one "left over" (we've no idea how) in Beth's clothes. That wasn't fun. At least I know the insides of the drier very well now, having spent an hour+ cleaning little flecks of poo from it. Ugh.
Dad arrived on Monday night, Beth and I went to get him from the airport. We didn't tell her who we were getting, so that was a bit of excitement for her. "Is it Pa? Is it Uncle Jeremy? Is it Bilby?". She had settled on the fact that it was "Going to be Uncle Jeremy" so when Pa walked off the plane I was worried she'd be disappointed, but she wasn't, she was super excited. So that was nice.
And now it's Wednesday morning. Theo woke up at 1am with a giant poo and a sore bum, so I got up to clean that. So I'm a bit knackered now... Birthday this weekend, should be good.
Oh no I can Theo awake now, time to go.
Tim