Friday February 7, 2014

We woke up to rain pattering on our tent this morning.  Fortunately my mum’s saying of “rain before 7 cleared by 11” works in New Zealand as well.  We took our time over breakfast and by the time we were ready to pack up the tent it was almost dry and it had stopped raining.

Sometimes you spot odd things when you are on a bicycle that you may miss if you are in a car or on a bus.

The wind had picked up and we had a windy ride to SH3.  Fortunately we were only spending about 8 kms on SH3 and then following SH39 to Ngahinapouri to our warmshowers hosts Darby and Tammy.  Our plan was to get to Hamilton today and then on to Matt’s Gran-in-law for Sunday.  Darby and Tammy live just outside of Hamilton so that is where we ended up.  They are both artists, Darby is a metal-worker/Blacksmith and Tammy is a potter – they both work part-time as well.

They weren’t going to be home until 5:00 pm so we took our time and stopped at the Town of Pirongia for lunch and a wander around.

Pirongi has a small historic museum which tells of the Maori wars and the European “invasion”.   Often these small museums are not open when we go through the Town or village as they are primarily run by volunteers. It also had a redoubt which is similar to a small fortification to protect the European settlers from any Maori incursion.

The redoubt was a lot smaller than we thought it would be.

We arrived at Darby and Tammy’s place at 4:30 and they arrived home just after 5:00pm.  Bimbo the dog was protecting the property.

Darby made us a great dinner of green-lipped mussels, lamb kofkas, coleslaw, sweet corn – lovely.

We stayed up late chatting to them about New Zealand and some of their travel experiences.  They ride a tandem and have cycled a lot in Europe.  We are looking forward to going to some of the Eastern block countries after talking to them about their travels.