By Ruth
Today was our second of three planned rest days here in Kaitaia. I somehow managed even better sleep than the first night, getting in over 10 hours straight! I’ve always been a bit of a champion sleeper (not to brag), but this was impressive even for me.
This morning we got some information about a stream crossing that we will have to do on our first day out of here. Given that they are expecting this big rain/windstorm tomorrow, it is likely the stream will be flooded and difficult to cross. This was starting to get absurd. We considered changing our plans yet again, but I was really getting fed up with trying to optimize. Already we are staying an extra two nights to avoid a storm, a decision which has led to the possibility of this river crossing being less doable (if we had left yesterday morning like originally planned, the stream would have been fine to cross since there hasn’t been a ton of rain recently). I didn’t want to make another modification to the plan only for that to have some other knock-on effect we weren’t expecting! Also, I am getting antsy – patience is one of my, shall we say, “areas for improvement”.
So we are sticking with our plan to leave Monday morning, but we are bringing an extra day of food. That way, if we get to the stream and it’s not safe to cross, we can camp out Monday night on this side of the stream and wait for it to go back down. This way we will get to start moving on Monday, which I am stoked for, even if we only get 15km down the road.
Other than that decision-making drama, the day was pretty uneventful. We wandered into town to go to the Kaitaia Saturday Market, but it was sort of closing down already by the time we got there, so not too much to see for us.
Later in the day we headed back to the Pak’n’Save, our favourite haunt in town. This was our third visit in three days!
The first day we went around 5:30 and it was packed. This made sense, we reasoned, as people stop off to pick up groceries after work. The next day we decided to go earlier, to try beat the crowds. But at 11:30 am on a weekday, it was somehow even busier! Needless to say today was bustling too. It seems that we aren’t the only ones who just can’t stay away from this shop.
The people who work there are very friendly, or maybe just talkative. One lady in the produce section was sorting through the green grapes and took the opportunity to complain to us about their quality as we walked by.
“Who would put this out?” she asked us, waving a sad bunch of grapes in our direction, “they’re all watery! I’m going to chuck them out. No one’s going to buy them.”
We made some noises of agreement as we tried to get past.
Later, at the check out, the lady tried to start up a conversation about the dried soybeans we were buying for one of our dinners on the trail.
“I’ve never seen these before! What are they like?”, she asked me.
“Um, I don’t know, I’ve never had them either”, I replied.
She didn’t seem to understand, maybe my Canadian accent was too strong. “Probably taste just like potato chips, I imagine,” she reassured herself, though I can’t figure out why she thinks that.
In just a few days we’ll be camping out in the rain, eating our dried soybeans, and maybe then I’ll understand what she meant, and I’ll start pining for Kaitaia and its grocery store full of strange but friendly people.