1/2/2012

When I was catching up on writing the journal last night, I had Wicki, the psycho cat, watching me. She’s sixteen years old and was sitting on the edge of the table, just looking at me writing, as if to say “what the hell is she doing”? Wicki would be walking somewhere and would all of a sudden, stop in her tracks for about a minute, as if she’d forgotten where she was going and then carry on, on her merry way again. Hence the nickname  psycho cat! I’ve seen her do that a few times. She’d also show her “Jekyll side” and lash out with her claws and bite you all of a sudden. The poor thing!

The weather was wet and miserable today and I
didn’t do any exploring. I did want to try to get a refund on an adaptor I’d bought in Christchurch at Dick Smiths electrical shop. I bought an adaptor there a few weeks ago to fit my phone recharger and that worked but when I tried to use it on
my laptop recharger, the recharger wouldn’t fit into the adaptor. I’d kept the receipt but when I asked in the shop in Porirua if they would give me a refund on it, they said that without the packaging they wouldn’t be able t
o resell it, so the answer was no unfortunately. Of course, I hadn’t kept the packaging. Who normally does, especially if you’re travelling!

I had been to Wellington before and had planned on doing more exploring in the city when I was back again at the end of the month. So these few days I just took it easy. The next major part of the trip was going to be in Paihia, for the Waitangi celebrations. Before I left, I did some research on finding the best way of getting from Wellington to Auckland. I had a choice of taking a twelve hour daytime train: the Overlander, for nearly one hundred and fifty dollars or follow someone else’s advice and book a domestic GrabaSeat fare, with Air New Zealand, which apparently were more reliable than Jet Star, for ninety dollars and get from Wellington to Auckland in less than half the time.

So I’d booked the flight. Gabby, Papa Tipua’s daughter was flying to Auckland an hour before me on the same day and I said I’d ask at the airport if I could change my ticket, so that we could travel together. I was flying the next day, so went to bed reasonably early that night.