Marahau Day 2

We had planned to get up, walk into the park early, and photograph the sunrise. I set the alarm for 6:00, but luckily sun had already started to rise by then. We admired it briefly through the bedroom window and slept for another hour or two. When I finally got up I shaved for the second time since we left home, but only my neck.

We ate breakfast and dithered about where to stay and what to do. My wife is an expert ditherer, and her performance this day exceeded even my expectations. She ended up rebooking our kayak trip out of Marahau to include an overnight, and changed our eco-tour out of Golden Bay (our next stop after Marahau) to a different option. Both were good changes, but the phone in our chalet only works erratically and Miriam has to use a calling card that requires the entry of lots of numbers, so the rebooking attempts took a lot of time and generated a lot of wifely adrenaline.

We drove about 20 minutes on a very narrow, windy road to the neighboring town of Kaiteriteri for lunch, and had another delicious fish chowder in a restaurant overlooking an exceptionally lovely bay.
We picked up balsamic vinegar, drove back, and decided to spend the rest of the day relaxing. Marahau was the first place we visited in NZ where the weather was actually warm. And the sky was blue, and the view out of our chalet was gorgeous. We read, Miriam fiddled more with the phone and our Golden Bay reservations, I plunked dobro and we even took a nap.

For dinner I sliced the tomatoes, crumbled the feta, and marinated them in the balsamic vinegar. Really good ingredients make a really good meal. Miriam sipped an NZ sauvignon blanc and I an NZ Merlot Cabernet.

Miriam had another wrassling match with the phone and finally got through to Golden Bay, where she shortened our reservation to give us more freedom to dither about arrangements after we arrive there.

A bit later we each had massive bowls of hokey pokey ice cream (we were leaving the next morning at it would have been a sin to waste it), finished the wine, packed our bags for our kayak trip, and went to bed.