Day 340-342: Karamea, New Zealand

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Friday, January 1st

Happy New Year everyone! May God our Father bless you this year and may happiness and peace be with you all.

As the New Year arrived we popped a bottle of bubbly and shared a kiss. 2009 had been a life altering year. We’ve seen much, and through all our adventures and experiences we’ve grown much too. It’s an amazing thing to look back on a year spent travelling a small part of our beautiful planet, and if not for the blog and the photos we’d be tempted to believe that it was all a dream. Our quest for a new life has borne much fruit, and we feel close to finding what we are looking for. God has blessed us immensely and continues to do so every day. It’s amazing (and scary) to walk by faith, but our Father looks after us and guides us to a new life. Our message for today was Psalm 139 verses 9 & 10, where King David declares:

If I flew away beyond the east
Or lived in the farthest place in the west,
You would be there to lead me,
You would be there to help me.

If that’s not the perfect New Year’s message for us, then we don’t know what is. We are indeed blessed and extremely thankful to have had a year such as 2009.

2010 brought with it a cold wind and we enjoyed the rest of our bubbly by the bonfire. At 00:30am we called it a night and headed home. Here we were eager to check if our vicious rat-trap had caught anything. We’d set it under the sink and when we checked the trap was gone. There’s a gap between the bottom of the cupboard and the wall, so we got our headlights and stuck our heads in to see if we could spot the trap or a victim. Ferdi saw the back end of the trap and it was obvious that the trap had sprung. With great difficulty he manoeuvred it out. When it finally came out it brought with it… Mr Bus Rat. He was a fast little bugger because the trap had missed his neck and set on his head. It was a messy business and our victory was an empty one. Ferdi got a shovel and we buried the little guy out in the garden. After the burial ceremony Talita made melted cheese sammies and hot chocolate as a midnight snack/wake.

We woke around 6am with headaches and the sound of little feet pattering on the roof. It sounded like the rats were coming to get us for murdering their leader. Too tired to care we continued snoozing until 9am. We set the trap again, just in case some smarty-pants wanted to step into the now vacant position of Mr Bus Rat.

It was a beautiful first day of the year, the sun shining brightly and not a cloud in the sky. We arrived at the holiday park later than usual and immediately performed our cleaning duties. Just after we’d finished our lunch Paddy came by. He was looking a little wired, but as we chatted he relaxed. He wants to buy a camera like our Sony so that he can photograph his flutes and some of his other art. He was having trouble getting the exact one that we got so we popped onto the internet to see if we could track one down for him. Naturally Sony doesn’t make our model anymore so we found him the best of the latest models.

When Paddy left we aligned and glued the top panels together again. With the sunny weather the resin should set properly. With that done we headed home where we had a nice long nap. As we cooked dinner a hare came up and sat nibbling on the grass right by the bus. The vermin are getting bigger and cuter around here.

Today’s highlights:
1. Getting Mr Bus Rat.
2. A sunny first day of 2010.
3. A long afternoon nap.

Saturday, January 2nd

The lovely weather of the previous day was just a tease, because we woke to a wet and misty morning. The rain intensified when we got to the holiday park and we feared that we’d have to swim home later. We cleaned two of the cabins and then performed the rest of our cleaning duties in between people coming and going. Cleaning public facilities should be next to the phrase “exercise in futility” in the dictionary. You wash the floors and one person walks in and it was all for naught. Well, we suppose we should keep on top of the cleaning, otherwise it would end up looking like a muddy jungle around here.

Usually we don’t mind the rain, but when you want to do some fiberglass or resin work it’s a pain in the butt. As we’ve mentioned, the humidity messes with the curing process of the resin, so trying is a waste of time and resin. Since we could do nothing more on the boat or the telephone booth until we have a few days of good weather we headed home. After lunch we watched a movie, then got a call from Guppy saying they’d be home this afternoon. We’d not expected them till the 5th, but with the crappy weather they’ve been having they decided to come home early. We quickly packed all our stuff back in the van, had a shower followed by a cuppa. It was raining hard and we wondered if the roads would be flooded again.

We cooked dinner and waited for the Guppy family to return. They arrived around 8pm and we shared another cuppa and some stories from the last three weeks. They were tired from the trip so we said good night and spent the rest of the night in our van in their driveway. We were a little sad to leave the beautiful bus, but it was also great to be back in our own home.

Today’s highlights:
1. Enjoying a great movie.
2. Vetkoek and strawberry jam.

Sunday, January 3rd

This morning we said goodbye to the bus and the lovely spot where the Guppy family live and moved back to the holiday park. After the last flood a Grader had come through and fixed the washed out gravel road, but after yesterdays rain we found the river had flooded again and the road had been washed out once more. It was the worst we’d seen it and we were forced to take it slow.

When the sun peaked out we had high hopes for a beautiful day and had our breakfast at a picnic table. The good weather didn’t last, and soon it was raining again. The foul weather left us in a foul mood. With the amount of water dumped on the park it started to seriously resemble a marsh. If you dared to venture out without gumboots you’d end up with soaked shoes. We could do nothing but stand around and look at our canoe, so we went to see John about a place to stay. He gave us one of the cabins free of charge (very nice of him!!!) and we moved in. The rest of the afternoon was spent looking at a design for our paddles and reading.

When dinner time came around we decided to go out for dinner. We had heard that the Karamea Village Hotel had good pub grub at a decent price. Once there we enjoyed lovely dark ale with our fish/corn-patty and chips. The weather was absolutely miserable so back at the park Ferdi made hot-chocolate to cheer us up.

Today’s highlights:
1. Getting a nice cabin to call home for a while.
2. Dark ale and good food.

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Comments

[Ewald van Huyssteen]

Great testimony on th new year
Thanks for shring a great testimony on new year. Living by faith isn't easy untill you look back. Just to mention that Western Australia is very warm and sunny at the moment and today the forecast is for 38 degrees Celsius.

[thetravelbugtribe]

Happy New Year Talita and Ferdi. If you are fed up of the wet weather, come back up here! Or at least send some of the rain this way!