Let there be light

April 10

We awoke to still no power. No electricity and no water. We brushed our teeth with kettle water and ventured outside to chat with our host Gaye to get the update on the power failure.

She said Vector, our Xcel equivalent, was continuing to work on the fault and that power should be restored by 4 p.m. We were dubious but hopeful.

Gaye owns an arts and crafts shop and has a shower there that we were able to use, so we packed a bag and headed down to town with our towels, toiletries and clothes for the day.

At the back of the store, we showered in the back room where a shelf prevented the door from closing all the way.

Thankfully there weren’t any customers shopping yet. I don’t think the shower gets used very often because it wasn’t draining very well, so I showered as quickly as I could. Mitch said this experience was getting us ready for the RV next week. All part of the adventures of traveling, right?

Since we couldn’t cook the eggs we bought yesterday at the store for breakfast, we went out. Back to Vino Vino. We sat on the back porch overlooking Oneroa Beach. We started with the Argentinian cheese puffs, which were delicious, and moved on to berry French toast and muesli. Yum. We’re gonna miss this place.

After brunch we strolled around town and popped into some shops.

At a really nice jewelry shop, Mitch bought me a necklace that was in the design of a sea urchin, or Kina, without its spikes. The artist draws inspiration from the sea animal and then crushes sand into each piece of art from different beaches on Waiheke, so the pieces have various colors. I liked one made of sand from the beach just behind the shop, Big Oneroa Beach.

We actually saw a Kina on our Abel Tasman Kayak trip. Jade, our guide, pulled one out of the water with her paddle so we could see it.

Kina have been a traditional component of Māori diet since pre-European times and have been fished commercially since 1986 in small quantities under the quota management system in restricted areas along the coast of New Zealand. Attempts to export it to Asian markets have been unsuccessful.

We popped back to the grocery store to grab some bottled water as we figured we might need that. When we parked in the parking garage, we saw this funny sign and learned a new name for what they call their shopping carts.

Mitch had already done research on moving to another accommodation if the power wasn’t restored. We had been here for 24 hours and our patience with the situation was wearing thin.

On the way back to our lodging around 2:30, we passed a Vector truck and inquired about the status of the outage from one of their technicians.

She said they found the fault and were confident the power would be restored by 4 p.m.

At 3:48, the apartment came to life. The lights came on, the fridge started humming and the water in the toilet was gurgling. Everything coming out of the pipes was a poopy color brown. Mitch kept running the water until it turned clear. I guess the sediment builds up when the pump dies. We were back in the land of the living though. Hooray! We’re glad we bought that bottled water.

We plugged in our fading devices and got to work on posting the blog. We had fallen behind yet again. We’ll catch up one of these days!

We hit another one of Stuart’s restaurant recommendations for dinner. Ki Māha, which means to dwell in a pleasurable place, was a beautiful spot overlooking the wild Tasman Sea. Our meal was delicious and our hazelnut nougat dessert was the star of the show.