The Getaway

Cyclone Gabrielle was closing in fast and by now it was clear that it was going to hit from the East. So we decided to move our asses as far West as possible, which meant New Plymouth. I was lucky and managed to snatch up a beautiful flat on ABB for three days where we could wait out the disaster. On the way we stopped at the lovely Windermere Farms near Wanganui to stock up on all kinds of berries plus enjoy some truly decadent pancakes, see below. 🙂 Once we’d arrived at New Plymouth and solved the mystery of the key box, we raided the local New World to make sure we wouldn’t starve over the next days. By the late afternoon, there was already strong winds and things were getting darker. So we hunkered down. The next day (Tuesday), we found out that all the „bad weather options“ (like the wonderful museum and art gallery) were closed, along with most shops. Which made sense, apparently there been a shelter in place warning for the day. So we had lunch at Monica’s Eatery, took a short stroll along the waterfront walkway and then headed back to wait it out. The storm was pretty intense and as a bonus feature there was also a 6.3 earthquake … brrrrrr … fortunately, nothing broke. But following the news, we saw that the Northern and Eastern regions, which had already been hammered by the previous two events (Cyclone & heavy rain) were taking quite a beating. Unbelievable. These were scenes and pictures which you don’t really expect to see in NZ.

Which sucked, but at least we were rewarded with a nice sunset including a rainbow from our living room window.