Tuesday was more of the overcast and cloudy weather, but at least it was calm. We wanted to make the most of the morning while we had the car. We headed to the A H Reed Kauri Park. This is a remnant kauri and totara forest on the edge of town. There is a 23m high waterfall at the top end, and a very cool boardwalk high up in the forest canopy. From memory the poles the boardwalk is on are 11m high. We did a loop around what is a lovely little forest. From there we carried on to see the Whangarei Falls, also on the edge of the city. These ones are 26m high, and again there is a short loop track around the falls. Since I had left my camera behind we resorted to trying to record the falls on our phone cameras.
By this stage it was afternoon, so we made our way back to our carpark and Suzi. We had a quick lunch and took the car round to the garage. It sounded like the mirror had turned up so it looked good for getting everything done at once. We walked off to have a look around the downtown shops. We found the post shop and collected our mail. Our main mission for the afternoon was a swim so we walked on to the swimming pool – sorry – aquatic centre. The wave pool wasn’t making waves that day so we had a bit of a swim in it, and then a few slides down the water slides. Both were suitably tame someone explained, but one was dark. We started with the one we could see in, before finally tackling the dark one. It was pitch black inside and a bit disorienting. The kids love it apparently. We had a nice long soak in the spa pools and took advantage of the showers on the way out.
We were not long back at Suzi when the call came to pick up the car. It turned out that the mirror wasn’t done; it had only arrived late in the afternoon. They could do it first thing in the morning, so that was Plan B. It was considered lucky that it was a white mirror – the car is white. We were a bit surprised that the ordering of the mirror had not been concerned about colour; a red mirror on a white car would have been an interesting concept.
Wandering around town we had found the hospice op shop and picked up some more reading. Wyn was soon absorbed in the round-the world exploits of Naiomi James the NZ yachtswoman back in the 1970s.
