Tough Decisions

Today is Friday, and Brendon and Helen plan to head home today, but first Bruce and Brendon spent a couple of hours exploring the motor of the new motorhome, the GPS etc etc. Helen and I zoned out and drank coffee and left them to it. At one stage we went for a walk around the huge Napier NZMCA Park and I don’t think they were even aware we had gone!

After they went Bruce and I did some serious talking about where we will go to from here. Nearly 3 weeks ago, Judy’s father had a fall (and not for the first time). This time however, he made a proper job of it and broke his arm, his femur and banged his head. He had to have a hip replacement on the broken hip side, but the replacement that had already been there had to be cut out first, so the surgery was a major. Unfortunately, Dad has not really managed to get going since then. A phone call last night from his sister raised concerns that firstly, there were care deficits in the hospital due to busy staff; and secondly that there seems to be a lack of information coming to the family because no-one is there to ask questions and /or demand answers.

We finally made the decision that we would abandon the rest of our planned trip and head up to Whangarei. We decided that we would leave in the morning but in the meantime we would tick off another couple of things on our Napier to do list.

First was to go the Rush Munro’s Icecream outlet. We thought this was a factory outlet but it turned out  that the factory had moved some time ago so it was just a shop. We enjoyed our icecream but would not have gone if we had realised.

Next we headed off to the Waitangi Cultural Park. There was a large carved gateway to the park.

Behind it is a ring of totem poles representing the points of a Maori navigation compass. Apparently there should be 32 in total, so a few are still  to come. There was a lot of information posted about how the Maori navigated their canoes which was quite interesting.

All around these totems is a large reserve which includes the estuary of the Clive and the point where the river meets the sea.

Birdlife is prolific here, but it is sad that the backdrop to the scenes where I photographed the birds is the smokey chimneys of the fertiliser works.

 

What also disappointed us was the amount of rubbish lying around. We picked a little bit up but the quantity was significant and was going to be more than a two person job.

The rest of the day was spent on preparations for our trip tomorrow – emptying waste tanks, filling up with water, then fuel and heading back to camp for a good night’s rest before the challenges we know we will be facing in coming days.