Pottering Around Paihia
Thursday had been a busy day, so we had a lazy morning on Friday. There was a storm brewing, promising rain and wind, and we decided to stay put at Paihia at our RV Park. We were away from the coast by a couple of kilometres, and had power. On Friday afternoon we decided an outing was called for, so went out. We were near Haruru Falls, but couldn’t find them. I’d seen that we could drive to them from Waitangi so we drove around via there. We went round in a full circle, discovering a bridge and road back onto the main road not far from where we were parked up. We’d driven past the turnoff a number of times, and failed to see the signs pointing to the falls. The falls were OK, quite a lot of water falling a short distance. We’d passed a turnoff back round our circular route to Mt Bledisloe, and headed back there for 360 degree views over the Bay of Islands. On the short way back home we drove down Old Wharf Road to the Waitangi River just below the Haruru Falls. Apparently this was the first ever road in New Zealand, away from the original landing for the original travellers.
We woke on Saturday morning to the sound of rain. We’d expected it, and wondered how much we’d get. The wind was getting up too, so I got out in my parka and rolled the awning in. We were not going anywhere, so had a lazy morning and a lazy afternoon. The wind continued to increase and the rain got heavier, but neither seemed to be a problem. We were warm and dry and comfortable. The rain seemed a lot like Dunedin rain except much warmer – like about 15 degrees. Laura made lunch, and later we got the Rummy-O out for some brain exercise. The scores in that were; Wyn 2, Laura 1, Ross 0. After tea and a check on the weather warnings we settled down for the night, watching the Saturday night movie on TV.
At about 9.30pm the TV went off and it took a few seconds to realise that we’d lost power. In a motorhome a number of things come directly off battery power, like lights and pumps and fans. Other things rely on mains supply, a generator or running off an inverter off the battery which is really a transformer from 12V to 240V. When we have mains power available we just use it directly. If the mains power stops, only the things directly connected to it stop, and anything powered directly from the battery keep on going. It’s a bit like a fuse blowing, and a bit confusing for a start. When the TV went dead, it took a while to realise that we’d lost our mains power because all the lights kept going. There might be reasons why just our power would go off, like if we’d overloaded the circuit and tripped the circuit breaker. And in most places when you lose power you can look around and see if the neighbours are in darkness as well. Not so here as we are isolated, and any neighbours would have lights like we did. I might have gone out and checked the circuit breaker but it was precipitating down and I didn’t fancy getting soaked. It seemed more likely that there was a general power cut. We realised that it didn’t matter much either way, the movie hadn’t been much good anyway. We still had lights and cooking and heating and could just wait and see. We took the opportunity to wind the satellite dish down as the wind gusts were getting stronger and it was better off down flat. We all fell asleep to the sound of heavy rain on the roof.
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Above: Pudong, Shanghai in 2014
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