I didn’t manage to get the 8 hours of sleep as I wish. I was up early to have some bread in the kitchen, instead of my original plan to eat my breakfast on my way to the ferry terminal. Everything went well as planned. I met up with my friends, Jin & Jesses, 30mins prior to the 10am ferry to Waiheke island.
John and Mark met us up at the ferry terminal and drove us back to our “base” - Villa Pacifica. John did a wonderful job of finding and organizing a place for us, the young crowd. The place was beautiful and the view was magnificent. It was interesting seeing many faces that I don’t often see in Vancouver but there in NZ. Before I settled down, the gang were up and ready for lunch at a vinyard. With limited options as many were closed on Tuesday, we went to Stoneyridge - my first real meal in NZ. I enjoyed the company more than the food itself.
After lunch, we splited in few smaller groups. My group walked to couple of the beaches (north to south) and explored the island’s downtown a little more. I was interested to visit a set of War World II underground bunkers and tunnels called Stoney Batter, but it wasn’t possible due to limited transportation. The island was big and quite hilly that I would have trouble to bike around. The highlight of the afternoon was me chasing the baby ducks and their parents. It wasn’t the nicest thing to do freaking them out, but I was only wanting to take a photo of them. They ran fast, and I didn’t manage to get a picture, but it gave me a good laugh.
Later we went back to meet with another group. We started our way back to our base, all in one car with 6 people as the other car broke down and needed to be towed away. John again showed us being a great leader by assigning tasks to each one of us to do a quick shopping in the grocery store; and later, a great chef with Helen cooked us a delicious dinner. The lamb chop and the musscle were excellence!
Just before going to bed, the last bunch of people came back from the rehersal dinner. Gabi, Debbie and I had a meeting about the flower decoration for tomorrow. Gabi showed us the couple’s vision with pictures and went thru the list of what needs to be done. It was a bit challenging to envision and plan ahead without seeing the flowers and knowing how they would relate to other things in scale, but I knew that we would manage.