I awoke at around 5.30 this morning, and as expected, the tent was very wet from the rainfall over the night. I started to get packed up and, since the ground was saturated, used one of the bench tables outside the kitchen to put my luggage on.
Once the tent was empty, I started to dismantle it, putting the fly on a fence and managing to mostly dry the ground sheet shell part. It looks like the duck tape patch job has worked - only a little bit is coming away, so looks like I won't need to order a new fly after all :)
Once I had the tent all packed away, it started raining again, so I'm glad I had decided to be quick about that!
I ate a couple of bananas for breakfast, and checked the kitchen as I had half a head of lettuce left over - nobody else at the camp site wanted it though, so I packed it in the day bag.
As I was getting packed up, I met an Australian who was there in a camper van, with his New Zealand wife, and he was wearing a 'Where is Nessie?' t-shirt, so I showed him that Nessie was with me!
I checked out at reception, and started the walk to the bus stop. As I set off, the rain decided to be a bit more serious about its endeavours, and then the couple I had met drove by in their camper van.
They stopped, and gave me a lift in to town, which saved me the $2.60 bus fare. I went up to Eat street to abuse their wi-fi connection, and grabbed a cooked breakfast as I decided that it was a long bus journey and I'd rather be well fed for it
I then headed to i-Site to wait for the bus, with the rain coming and going in spots. I waited inside the building until 5 minutes before bus was due, then headed outside.
I noticed that there was one of the Duck bus tours outside, and everyone on the bus had just been issued with their duck whistles, so everyone on the bus was quacking away merrily and really enjoying it by the looks of it, which gave me a chuckle!
The bus arrived, and we all boarded, then it left at 11.26 - 15 mins late. I still had 15 minutes for the change over though so was not too worried, especially since a lot of other people were also due to get on the other bus, given that it was bound for Wellington.
The journey to Taupo was uneventful, and we arrived as anticipated with 15 minutes to spare for the change over. The driver confirmed it was the same stance for the Wellington bus, which arrived a few minutes late itself.
The next part of the journey was the longest leg, going over the Alpin plateau. The bus driver announced there would be no photo opportunity stop on account of the mountains being in the cloud, though since I was unaware that there was due to be one, I wasn't too bothered. I had noticed though that a lot of the passengers seemed to be photographing the scenery quite prolifically - I will admit that it just looked like a normal journey through the Scottish highlands to me so didn't feel compelled to take any photos!
We had a rest stop just south of Taihape, and I enjoyed a hot sausage roll and a cup of earl grey tea. After that it didn't seem to be long before I arrived in Levin, where Tina was waiting for me to take me to the farm
When we got to the farm, I was enlisted to help with feeding the lambs, and then we enjoyed a huge roast chicken meal, with sweet potatoes and all sorts of other delicious things, and I sorted out hanging up my wet tent in the garage.
I had soon requisitioned the computer, and got to work on sorting this blog out to make it more accessible, and also sort out the photo album so that it would be split in to days instead of having the whole album in one place.
As I was doing this, I discovered that UK Revenue and Customs had decided that since my package that I sent back home had been declared as over $200NZ, they wanted to get some tax out of me to the level of £55. This seems a bit steep, since the only thing that had actually been bought in New Zealand was the souvenir book from Auckland Sky tower - so thankfully Sara has agreed to argue my case regarding the fact that UK tax has already been paid on most of it. We'll have to see how that pans out!