GBI day 4, Our Favorite Islander

16Jun08
GBI day 4

After a wild night of wind and rain we awoke to find ourselves in the middle of a newly formed lake. Deciding to get ready and have breakfast before digging out the van and still thinking that we would tough it out and start our tramp today, Justin braved the elements and took a cold shower in the rain! He's certainly more dedicated to hygiene than me.

And by the time we try to get the van back on the gravel road, the impromptu lake has deepened (ie. we shouldn't have waited) and after some wheel spinning, we realize that we'll need to be towed out. Fortunately this campground is adjacent to the DOC headquarters (the NZ park service), so we head over there to enlist some help. It's still raining cats and dogs and the office is completely empty. We wait, and soon enough a woman comes over from across the street and explains that everyone is in a meeting. After giving us the latest weather forecast, which is rain and more rain, she recommends we get “one of the boys” across the road who do the dirty work for the DOC to pull us out. So we walk over to the DOC/road work truck yard and Justin approaches the first guy he sees and asks for a tow. I had to play interpreter though, because this man had trouble understanding Justin, and Justin couldn't make sense of his heavy kiwi accent and soft voice! He was friendly enough and readily agreed to help, throwing a length of rope in his truck and saying he'd meet us over there. We never caught his name, but he will forever be known to us as “the laconic man” because he was the very definition of the word. He was a weathered, wirey old guy who had certainly done a lot of manual labor in his life, with a dry wit and a very reserved and well, laconic, mannerism. He reminded me of the guys I met in Maine at Bath Iron Works. He was much better dressed than us for the rainy cold weather with gumboots (tall rubber boots), a heavy wool sweater and a reliable rain slicker. He was also sporting a blond beard that according to wikipedia falls under the category of “friendly mutton chops.” It consisted of neat sideburns that extend across the cheeks and connect to the mustache. I wish I had his picture!
Anyways, he meets us back at the van and proceeds to tie a rope between the vehicles – I don't know my knots, but he put a stick in each knot to make them easy to untie afterwards (everyone on this island is a sailor.) He was pulling the van from the rear and since Justin didn't have any visibility out the back I was the official signal giver. However I failed in my job because once Laconic Man started pulling up the slack I didn't get Justin going in reverse fast enough, so the rope snapped in two. No worries though, Laconic Man just got out, retied the rope like he expected it to happen, and said very matter-of-factly like it was the punch line to a joke, “he wasn't driving”. I promised it wouldn't happen again, and sure enough this time he pulled the van back onto the gravel and all was well. We thanked him up and down while he was retrieving his rope, and all he said was “better stay on the roads” with what had the be a wink. This guy was great!
So having had enough excitement for the day by 10am, we decided to postpone the tramp and check in early to our B&B. When we booked passage to the island, the ferry company had a winter special that essentially gave us 3 nights free in a local B&B. We weren´t scheduled to check in for a few more days, but we called to see if we could check in early and it was no problem. Hooray - a place to dry off!

On the way there, we stopped at Claris Texas Cafe for lunch - mussel chowder for me and Justin had fish n´ chips. The owner was in a tizzy because he was supposed to be flying to Auckland but all the flights were cancelled due to the storm. One of the perils of living on the island...

The B&B was in Tryphena and called the Manuka Lodge. We had a nice little self-contained unit with kitchen, bath and a view of the ocean – we could have moved in! The owner, Pat, was a retired long-line fisherman and very talkative and friendly - his wife Barbara was trapped in Auckland due to the storm. After checking in we happily whiled away the rest of the day reading, knitting and watching the storm outside. How civilized...