On our way back, we stopped at a mushroom farm in Parkvale. The two women working there were not very interested in helping us or offering any kind of tour, so we just bought 1/2 a kilogram of 'seconds' (mushrooms that were slightly damaged in some way. The smell of manure was quite strong, and continued to remain that way throughout countryside!
Our bag of 'seconds'
In Carterton, we stopped into Paua World but there were no tours of the workshop on weekends. Darn. So we walked through the store a bit then watched the "Magic of paua", a looping video on the life cycle of the mollusk.
He seems so happy... almost as happy as a clam.
They had giant maps were one could put pins in their hometown. Boulder...
...Island Bay
On the way out of town, we popped into St. Mark's Anglican church. Built in 1874, it was the last of four wooden churches (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) built in the Wairarapa Valley at that time.
St. Mark's
Uh... isn't the story usually about Jesus and not some... jackass?
A baptismal font
The lighting was absolutely beautiful!
The stained glass windows were lovely too. (There's our ass again in the background.)
The last supper. Notice Judas sneaking away in the background with his payment.
The holy grail, I presume.
A hedgehog!!
The organ, which arrived in 1909, was built in Manchester, England, and still has the original mechanical action.
Someone had just walked away and left their shoes!
We continued back to Greytown, stopping in the Pinehaven Orchard store, where most of the fruit was grown locally. We bought a bunch of stuff, including kiwifruit, passionfruit, dragonfruit, and several feijoas.
The difference between Gold kiwifruit (left) and the ones we are used to having (the green kiwifruit)
In spite of the rain, we strolled briefly up and down the main street. A sculpture of a moa led us into the Greytown Gallery... a book store and gallery (featuring native birds).
You knew there'd be a picture if there was a moa involved, right!?
While browsing the bookstore section, I noticed a small poster tossed to the side. I asked about it. The woman at the desk didn't know (in spite of her vast knowledge of most of the things in there), so we went back to the gallery to consult with the "expert". This woman did know what the print was of. It was by an artist named Trevor Lloyd (1863–1937), a New Zealand artist, illustrator and cartoonist. The original of this print, called Death of the Moa, was in a gallery in Auckland.
Something about it really drew me in, so I asked what they were selling it for. They both looked kind of blankly at each other. They hadn't really thought about it. The one woman had recently found it hidden away somewhere and had just set it out to flatten it. But since the quality wasn't that great, they suggested $10. Done! I thought it was a great deal for something so unique. Of course, I didn't have any cash on me so Regan had to pay!
The painting is filled with native birds, including the moa (of course), fantails, keas, pukekos and many more. There were also many small impish forest creatures running about. One was even riding a tuatara.
The fantails doing their 'thang'
Hunger was calling us, but after looking at restaurant prices, we ducked into the local grocery store. I had a delicious and filling vegetable frittata, and we couldn't resist the discounted Neenish tarts.
A bit lemony and VERY sweet
We were originally thinking of spending the weekend, but with all the rain, activities would be limited. So we just drove back down to Wellington. Ironically, we were on this very same road three days after we met and now, three days before I was to leave.
We got to Wellington around 4:30 pm. It had FINALLY stopped raining, but we were fairly tired so just called it an early night.
