Te Araroa (day 35) - Paekakariki Holiday Park to Wellington / mile 1058

6:30 in the morning. I'm sitting outside The Perching Parrot in Paekakariki eating croque monsieur. Stray dog is wandering the street, sparrows are landing on the table hunting for breadcrumbs. It's raining. I'm waiting for Patsy whom I met half an hour ago standing by the beach holding a colourful umbrella, wandering if she should have a swim or not. There's too many dolphins in the sea this morning so the swim will have to wait.

Patsy promised to come over and give me a lift through the next road section towards Wellington. She is the first person I've met today. Barrister comes out with my latte and informs me that the dog belongs to the dairy next door but it wanders around town every morning and that I shouldn't worry about it.

Patsy comes earlier than expected buys me a tea and a coffee for herself. We sit outside and talk about her Irish heritage and how she lived in Paekakariki for 30 years with her partner. They decided to buy and live in double decker bus few years ago but then they split. He still lives in the bus, she moved into a house by the beach. Patsy tends to often lose her keys. She got drunk with her friend few months ago and couldn't get back to the house, so she slept in the car.

Apparently the dog likes to wander around the road and train tracks as well. You can park your car in the middle of Paekakariki's high street, sometimes reversing cars hit them. It happens quite often. We finish our drinks and I load my backpack into the trunk of Patsy's car. We go to Johnsonville, Patsy is a geriatrician and she is going that way to visit an elderly patient. We talk about her two visits to Ireland, leading a nomadic lifestyle and how old people sometimes don't have the will to live.

She drops me off on the side of the street at Johnsonville, gives me her phone number so I can update her on the progress of the hike and drives away honking.

I walk through the last section of TA to Wellington it's still raining and the wind keeps on pushing me around. 

Once there I find the only opened post office in town and send few things I don't need along with hokey pokey chocolate back to England. I want to send more but I can't. Honey products are out of the question, wine needs a special packaging, sea shells need to be professionally sterilised. I apologize to two girls queueing behind me as I stink. Turns out I saw one of the them three days ago in the most remote part of Tararua's jumping off the swing bridge to the river with some other guy. She was dressed quite different back there, wearing a bikini but I recognize her eyes. Her name is Jess and she lives in London. Life is stranger than fiction.

I find the Nomads Capital Hostel and check in. It's a huge, busy backpackers hub with a bad rep as there's a nightclub next door and a lot of noise comes through the walls. It seems good enough to me. I take a shower, do the laundry and go out to get some food for tomorrow as everything here will be closed on the Christmas Day.

A lot of young people wanders around the hostel having an adventure of their lifes. Cooking Christmas Eve food, watching Grinch on the communal TV, browsing their phones. Mostly the last one. I just want to go back on the trail but I can't get to the South Island until 27th. Tomorrow I might climb a hill or go to the beach and drink the bottle of wine I bought but couldn't send to England, then wander around taking pictures or go to the mass. Relaxing is a difficult task sometimes.