Wednesday 10-6-10 Stu Brown

What a long night.  There was not a sound that night and we should have slept like babies, but we both could not sleep as we were listening for noises we never heard. Once the sun started to raise be both fell asleep till 9am.  With a few hours of sleep and a million attack and evacuation scenarios running through my head all night it was fair to say we were exhausted.  We did not even make breakfast, just changed and hit the road.  We back tracked to Wairoa and decided to pay to sleep some place that was welcoming.  

We pulled into town and sun was shining. Along the river that flows through town we brought some food and laid out in the sun all afternoon.  This was about all we could handle and it was fantastic! 

Around 4 we found a motorcamp.  It was a bit cheesy with the 50's greaser theme, but the facilities were super nice and clean.  We walked to the store and bought some ground beef to have tacos for dinner! Paul got intercepted by Stu Brown. At the time we thought he was just a quick hello, little did we know he would become our first Kiwi BFF.

Stu is short for Stuart (spelled the Scottish way since his parents were from Scotland) he is the grounds keeper at the camp and lives there full time.  He brought over 3 beers and said if we did not mind he would like to not drink alone tonight. Fair enough! Stu is 49, has six children, 5 with one ex wife, and one from another ex wife. All of his wives have been Maori. And he has fallen in love about 13 times! Oh Stu! He talked our ear off all night, and drank most of our wine. Funny how his glass was always full :) We did enjoy talking with him,  he has a heart of gold, but can be crass most of the time.  He liked to impress us with his knowledge of airplanes, and local Maori gang wars, and bragging about other travelers that have stayed there and have kept in touch with him (hint, hint) Cleaning up from dinner, he mentioned that he used to get "pissed" or drunk with other traveler's and how fun it was, blah, blah. We did not take the bait and told him that we were very tired from our lack of sleep the previous night.  We did exchange phone numbers. By the time we walked from the kitchen to the van we already had two text messages from Stu!

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