Te Kuiti - Sheep shearing capital of the world.

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Fri 29th:
Left Taihape figured we’d head back up north ‘Brown signing’ it. Brown signs denote things worth seeing; waterfalls, monuments etc. After looking hard for anything worth stopping for, we were nearly at Waitomo (200km from the start), and being a bit early (3 days early) we decided to stop at the next decent sized town.

Te Kuiti - The sheep shearing capital of the world.

So, just for the comedy aspect of it we stopped there, got a campsite with a council estate feel to it and headed straight to Warehouse (equivalent of Matalan) and got a 3 DVD set for NZ$20.

Got all set up and ready, ate, got in bed, plugged in heater - on lowest setting with the thermostat at the lowest - and set up the DVD player, it was looking so good, until we got an ‘Invalid Region’ message. Gutted.

Sat 30th:
Got up, payed for another night in comedyville and first thing, Leanne heard the conversation. A man had found someone’s purse, upon handing to the campsite owner women, he said :

I found it, but there was no money in it. If there was though I would have taken it, but my conscience is clear because there wasn’t anything in it.

Unbelivable.

Took the DVD back to Warehouse and swopped it for a Region 4 one. And managed to get some flippers each in their clearance sale for NZ$20- each. So we’re all set up now to snorkel Fiji.

After that we just went round the town, saw the statue, some sculptures of Bats and Weta (cricket like things as big as 8 inches long) and a Marae (Te Kooti’s Marae). Stopped at tourist info while a lady made us choose from about 20 designs, exactly which stamps we wanted. Yes, she was that weird. Then went back to campsite and did laundry.

While waiting for our drying to do, all bedlam broke loose. It was council estate stuff. A woman took our washing out of the dryer and put hers in, using our moneyes worth of drying time. It got sorted out in the end, she was made to pay and we got a free dry run. But the cheek of it.
Then whilst her clothes were drying and our wet cold ones were on top of the machine - the man that found the purse started asking if there were any unclaimed clothes, because he thinks he left his in the washing room, whilst staring at our clothes. Matt ran over and made it clear that they were ours before some stranger was handed over all our clothes!

That night we ate in the kitchen and the campsite owners sister came in and talked to us for a bit. Apparently for around 300 years there have only been 7 families or ‘lines’ in the town and they are all intermarried to keep the lines pure. Basically they’re all inbred. And proud of it!

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