Acacia Bay Walk
Alright, so everything’s settling into even more of a routine here with the new job and the cleaning keeping me busy. The shifts tend to change depending on the week, but I can count on cleaning everyday in the morning and probably working at Dixie Brown’s in the evening. DB gives me two days off a week, and this week happened to be Wednesday, the day after Quiz Night. That’s just awesome because everyone needs Wednesday to recover properly. I really like that schedule because it gives me a few hours in the afternoon to do whatever I want before going into work, and then I’m back for a hot shower at 10:30 at the latest. All of that might be changing in about two weeks, though, because the school holiday starts next week. Michael, the owner of DB, has given me some warning that I’ll be working day shifts pretty soon, so I need to work that out with Beth. If everything is perfect, I might be able to keep both jobs for a while longer. If not, well, I knew that I would probably end up working full-time at DB eventually, so it will just come a little bit sooner. I’ll keep you guys posted.
But anyway, Taupo is still awesome. The weather is steadily getting warmer, but it’s still freezing outside in the mornings. A storm the size of Australia has been hitting the two islands for the last week or so, and there’s even a rumor of snow in the near future. I really want the rain to stop so that I can actually do something with my days again. Lately, it’s just been the library or my room, which isn’t incredibly exciting. I did get one worthwhile hike with Daniella in a few weeks ago, though.
On one of those rare clear days, we set out to explore the trail around Acacia Bay. It’s just past the harbor on the West side of Taupo, so we’d never been out there before. I’d like to go back again, actually, because we had to turn back before reaching the hills on account of dark clouds. At first, we got a little lost. New Zealand isn’t great about labeling things with signs, and it was kind of a last-minute decision on our part, so we got turned around in the suburban area by the water. It wasn’t a bad place to be lost, though, because there are some really cute houses and side streets down there. That really great palm-tree-that-isn’t-a-palm-tree that they have here was everywhere, and some of the fences down there are pretty awesome because people managed to work the roots of the tree into the wood to make it this earthen wall of stakes guarding their houses. It took a long time to get out there because the engineers of Taupo, in all of their brilliance, never constructed a bridge to cross the river from the harbor, so we had to go all the way around. Daniella pointed out that sailboats wouldn’t pass through if that were the case, but I can only tolerate so much logic when it takes an extra half hour of walking.
Heading Out Towards the Bay
The walk itself was just gorgeous. It was both similar and different to the walk on the other side of the lake because it was the same scenery, but it consisted of much more woods and meadows than the Two Mile Bay walk. It actually reminded me a little bit of the area around Challenge and Merry Mountain Village from back home. It even had the blackberry bushes leaning over the path, but they were unfortunately out of season.
Hugging the Trail Around the Lake
We followed the trail out towards the water for a ways and let it snake back and forth along the cliff. We actually could have cut out about 45 minutes by cutting straight across the meadow and ignoring the path, but the view was much better that way. Then, as I mentioned, we had the decision of continuing on or turning out once we reached the road to the hills. I think we made the right choice turning back when we did because I think we would have lost the light. That will be another day. On the way back, two mildly freaky things happened. First off, we discovered an entire skeleton of an ambiguous species lying near the road. Pretty sure it wasn’t human, but it was still fairly large and creepy. Then, just after that, a giant, blood-thirsty dog tried to chase us off the trail. We weren’t that worried about it until we realized that the gate keeping him on the other side of the fence was wide open. So we gave it a very large berth and headed cautiously home.
Water, Meadows, Clouds, and Daniella
A few days after that, another important event happened: Hannah made her final return visit and fulfilled her dream of skydiving. It was very abrupt given that the cloud cover was so unpredictable, but she managed to get it in the very last day before the big storm hit. We almost didn’t get to see her moment of glory, actually. She was originally going to jump at 1pm, giving us plenty of time to finish up cleaning and go out to watch, but because of the weather, she ended up leaving the hostel at about 11:30 in the TTS van. We still hadn’t done the kitchen yet, so we rushed to get that done and everything all set. For the record, I was ready to go by a quarter to 12, but the boys had to have their toast. They still deny causing any delay. Their theory was that Hannah still had a lot of time to sit in the lobby and wait for everything to get set up. As we were pulling out of the driveway in Beth’s loaned car, however, Beth came running out after us with a phone still glued to her ear. “She’s just gone up! Clear the %*&# out!” So Darren drove like a maniac all the way to the airport. It’s generally a 15 minute drive, and we had just about that much time to make it there. Then there was road construction and the fact that no one knew exactly how to get there.
At one point, we were absolutely certain that we had missed her. As Darren hurtled down the highway with Paul as his technical navigator, I kept my eyes up on the sky and saw a couple of yellow parachutes open up way out there. We were positive that that was Hannah, but it turns out that it was another skydiving company - probably Skydive Taupo or Freefall. We were so bummed by the time we drove up that we almost didn’t bother rushing inside. I guess some of the adrenaline was still there, though, because we managed to jog the rest of the way. It must have been quite a sight for all of the people in the lobby waiting to go up. Once the news of Hannah’s jump spread, the entire hostel emptied out for her. There were the six of us in Beth’s car, and then Henry and Nikki in their van ahead of us. So this mass of people literally flew through one door and out the other in an effort to reach the landing zone, all while our friends who work there shouted, “Go! Go! You have two minutes! She’s about to jump!” Tim, who does the video work on the ground, grabbed his camera and took off with us. It’s fun because all of those people are either our drinking buddies after hours or people who hang around the hostel on off days, so they were all just as psyched about Hannah finally getting to jump. Brad, Beth’s partner, is the guy in charge of TTS, so they have a lot of sway at Blackcurrant. Hannah was lucky enough to jump with Brad himself, who has something like 20,000 jumps under his belt.
So we ran out to the drop zone with about ten cameras pointed at the sky, and we just barely managed to catch her on film. She was the first one down, so we got lots of time to watch her descent. If you look at my camera, there are about six shots of perfect blue sky with nothing else in it because the zoom wasn’t good enough. The camera people circling around her fell like stones - it was actually pretty impressive how fast they fell and how close they cut it with pulling the chutes. Then Hannah landed and we could all tell that she was beyond happy to mark that one last experience off her list. I guess her hands were freezing and her face was flushed bright red from the wind chill, but she loved every minute of it. The other German girls who jumped with her weren’t nearly as enthusiastic, but Germans in general tend to be more reserved in public, I’ve found. They didn’t really do the whole jumping around and yelling for the camera thing that you’re supposed to do at the end, but that was just one minor setback.
Yay, Hannah!
After all of that died down, we headed back inside to watch her DVD and to make the drive home. You could tell that she was still on Cloud Nine all day, so that was a nice day for everyone involved. Hannah just left for Pahia in the Northland a few days ago and will be heading back to her homeland of Scotland very soon. She’s been away from home for sixteen months, so I’m sure she’ll be happy to see her folks again. Daniella also went up north last week and is working in a hostel up there for a while. There is talk that she might return eventually, but as of now, it’s me and Leo sharing a room and carrying on without her. Leo is here at least until mid-October, and Darren has a job in town for the foreseeable future, so that’s pretty much life at the moment. I have hope that the job situation will straighten itself out somehow, but I’m just going to take it as it comes. If I have to move out, I’ll just move out and visit when I can. I’ll be sure to write more once I know what’s going on.
That’s about it. Not a whole lot to add on account of the bad weather, but I have a few ideas for when the sun comes out again. Cheers!