Woke about 6.45, and got up to take pictures of the sunrise, not too effectively really, hard to get a good shot, and timing is of course of the essence in these matters. But I tried. I also got Jen a cup of tea, but she remained semi-comatose for a quite a while, until roused by threats of it being cold. It had in fact been cold in the night, the duvet was barely adequate, and there had been some sharing of warmth, mostly from me to her!The usual day-start rigmarole, with the minor variations of specific location and situation - juggling washing up logistics with toothbrushing, showers versus poos and cubicle availability, I'm astounded by the amount of effort I put into calculating optimisations for the simplest tasks. After saying goodbye to Mike and Carol, who were also going through their own morning ritual, we drove about 200m up the road, and stopped at the Medical Centre to get my foot checked out.
Ah, cause and effect! Back, way back, in Oakura in Taranaki, I misjudged the size of a sleeping policeman, and the van banged down very heavily, with lots of noise from the dratted housecrap that living out entails. When we got to Robin's nest, and unpacked the newly purchased elegant slimly stemmed wineglasses, one was broken, and I tipped the shards from the handy cardboard packaging into the bin. Unfortunately, I clearly missed a tiny bit, and ended up getting it in my foot. After the 11km walk around Kaikoura, it hurts lots, and required my foot to be elevated for ages. So now, today, while we can, I'm going to get it checked to see if I'm going to lose my leg through gangrene, get septicaemia or just have a lump in my foot.
Jo is the friendly receptionist - she reckons I'm an accident case (does this save money??), and I fill out the form with the usual who, why, where, and sign here stuff. Please wait… about 15 seconds later just as I'm about to read an intriguing article about James May in a Spitfire ("the most significant British thing ever" - snore…) a fairly old (late 60's?) man appears and takes me into a consulting room, followed by Gok? an Asiatic youth with a stethoscope round his neck. There are many apologies from the older guy about his being a locum and thus not knowing the facilities well, which I respond to by asking if he's actually a fully qualified doctor or just a truck driver who fancies a bit of doctoring (his reply is that he's actually a dairy farmer, which prompts the obvious from me that I have a relative who's a dairy farmer and I'd trust him, so no problem…). The Asiatic kiddie is the intern, who's completing the last week of his month internship at the centre. Nice people! Quite understanding the face of a barely rational seeming Pom too. Anyway, the options of the foot are a) do nothing b) use some magnesium sulphate cream, unlikely to work well because of the skin thickness c) have a slash and dig attempt, which is unlikely to show up a 1mm long piece of glass, but which will at least clean it up and make it heal up around the offending item and render it harmless. Madly, I take option c.
In Treatment Room 2, team not-from-here eventually find a syringe, needles, and a local anaesthetic cartridge, along with some sterile swabs, a scalpel kit and a pair of those magnifying headgear gizmos that hobbyists wear when painting OO gauge model soldiers (we're talking small here) or when grading their stamps. You wouldn't believe how painful having a tiny injection in the sole of one's foot is - I'm really amazed! Fortunately it soon goes numb and Locum hacks away, Intern pronounces no sign of glass in wound, I make some jokes, they tape it up and we part best buddies. I feel great.
In fact, I feel so great that despite Jen suggesting that I should be taking it easy with my newly cut foot, I'm up for climbing Conical HIll, which dominates Hanmer Springs, and is an easy half hour, 550m climb. So we do that, and very nice it is too. My foot feels great, only the tight tendons in my right leg do any hurting, some pictures are taken, the wood smells lovely, the view is brilliant, and it's through woods so nobody gets cooked in the very hot (it's now 11ish) and direct sun. Marv. We pass on the potential extension of the walk into other woods and round the lakes/ponds, on the basis that we've forgotten to turn the gas on the fridge on and because it's so hot, we don't want the beef sausages to go off.
Into the van, and down the road we go. heading south on Hwy 7 and so on… Weka Pass is pretty impressive, large exposed, overhanging limestone cliffs, that were used as shelter by successive occupants of this landscape in their huntings, migrations and travels with livestock. It might have been nice to check out the Maori cave and rock paintings, but we didn't, probably because I'm conscious of the time and my foot is starting to wake up. In fact, it's starting to smart quite a bit!
We stop for lunch at the improbably named Balmoral Reserve, a low-facility campsite beside a river in the Balmoral Forest. No sign of Queenie, and in fact, not many signs of anyone. There are a few campers in here, but it's not a structured kind of place, they're just scattered amongst trees, like us. I hobble over to check out the river, and it's a very slow-moving, overgrown affair, with some ducks that surprisingly don't see me as a food source. Clearly they need training.
I am overcome, after a lunch of two substantial smoked chicken sandwiches, by an incredible lassitude, which the stroll to the river hasn't really affected. Returning to the van, Jen is asleep… time to go, or the pines of Rivendell/Balmoral (ha!) will claim us forever.
The roads are straight, incredibly straight, with the occasional speeder whom I let pass, and vehicles going the other way. The Kruse man talks about the oldest pub in NZ, and opportunities we're passing, probably losing forever… i'm having trouble staying awake here. We select Waikuku Beach Holiday Camp as a likely destination… turn off, it's 5km down the side road. Waikuku Beach grocery store sells Jen some teabags - we ran out at lunch time, 50 bags since we left, wow. There's a well-restored Austin A60 van, in BRG, parked outside advertising the place. We drive to the camp office, eventually Deb comes forward. She's from Arkansas, as her accent tells, and is happy to see customers - apparently most of her traffic is Kiwis, they don't get many "internationals" who kind of pass them by. And because it's not a weekend or summer, we can select our own patch. Sucking on congratulational Magnums, we cruise the slots… this is a Forgotten Campsite!! It looks like there's NOBODY here. Right down the end we park, make tea, do washing, eventually visit the huge, empty beach, accessed through pine woods which show signs of multiple kids' camps, hide-outs, play spaces. After beef sausage tea (onions! omelettes! broccoli!!), I take pictures of the sunset and moon across the estuary. Nothing but the sound of waterfowl, taking their last-minute actions before the sun sets… it's totally beautiful, utterly charming and I'm really, really glad we're here. G'night :-) !
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