Jack Frost had visited the apple orchard last night and painted everything an icy shade of white. No wonder the temperatures dropped dramatically overnight. The electric blankets got turned on to “low” in the early hours of the morning to keep our tootsies warm. Now that our cat Muffy is getting on in years she seems to feel the cold a lot more. So she crawled under the blankets and cuddled up pretending to be a furry hot water bottle.
Our time in sunny Hastings had come to an end – it was time to go home. Driving southwards we saw glimpses of the snowy ranges in the distance which we had gazed out at from the top of Te Mata Peak the previous day.
Grape vines in front of snow capped mountain range on the Takapau Plains
The skies clouded over the further south we drove. From Woodville we drove through the Manawatu Gorge, not my favourite piece of road at all as it is prone to slips. In 2011 the gorge was closed after several massive landslips and didn’t reopen until August 2012. The Manawatu Gorge (Te Apiti, meaning 'The Narrow Passage') runs between the Ruahine and Tararua Ranges, linking the Manawatu and Hawke's Bay regions. The wind turbines were visible on the hill tops when we first entered the gorge road, turning slowly as they changed the wind power into electricity for the national grid.
Wind turbines at the entrance to the Manawatu Gorge
Safely through that dastardly piece of road, I breathed a sigh of relief. It doesn’t seem to bother Robin at all, but it has always been a bit of a worry to me. Then it was an easy travelling the rest of the way home to Levin. We wondered what we would find at home, after some reasonably strong earthquakes. We hadn’t got around to securing our tall timber display unit to the wall – was it still standing or had it crashed and fallen? Luckily there was no damage at all, but it is always a worry living in an earthquake prone country. New Zealand is not called The Shaky Isles for nothing! We unpacked the caravan, washed out the fridge, cleaned the bathroom, and carried in a huge bag of laundry – I’ll deal with that in the morning.
Our elderly next door neighbour had been waiting all day for her furniture to arrive from storage. She had several friends waiting there to help her with unloading, and they waited, and waited. The large truck finally arrived in the dark. Tire blow-out, we overheard – no wonder it was hours late. We could hear bumps and noises coming through from outside as the furniture was finally unloaded. Oh dear, the driver will be glad to get home at the end of his long day.
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