Day 34, hokitika beach and clear up, jade carving, church, fat pipi

Feb 4 Saturday
We woke up with accommodation to sort out and plans to change. We quite liked where we'd ended up by chance. The little private deck out back surrounded  by ferns was a nice bonus on top of the spa bath for two, and it was beautifully quiet. Everyone else at the motel seemed to be on a bike holiday, they were gone in the morning and in bed early. We went straight to reception and booked in again. Good thing we did, the no vacancies sign went on! Next was to try to make the most of our unexpected early arrival. We'd  come here to carve jade and we were booked in for Monday morning but were going to have to follow a 6hr carving session with a 5 hr drive to Nelson. We wanted to see if we could change our carving and at least start it earlier. It was a gorgeous day outside, hot and sunny but the news was full of the trapped tourists at the glaciers with no way out, no power or water. Haast was also cut off on both sides and the road blocks extended almost up to Hokitika at Ross. We had been lucky not to get caught up in it.
We called in to Bonz and Stonz and got switched to the afternoon session so we could visit the beach first. They were pretty relaxed about it as they weren't  busy.
The beach was accessed by a gravel road that was closed off, we walked along to a concrete ship marking a shipwreck surrounded by rocks and boulders. Two women were admiring the view from the ship and we stopped to talk. Apparently before the downgraded cyclone hit, the road was tarmac and the boulders and debris weren't  there. It had all been moved by the storm. They were planning to go to Manapouri so we warned them about the road closures and how long it had taken us to drive round.

We ambled along the beach trying to work out if any of the stones were in fact jade. It's common to find them in this area and the local shops will buy them from you but you have to know what you are looking for and we definitely didn't! The tide was coming in and the water had quite a tow on it even at ankle deep and was quite capable of knocking and bruising ankles with heavy bits of driftwood as I painfully found out.

 There were some pretty big pieces of wood flung up on the beach as well but we didn't  realise how much had been moved until we turned around to come back along the walkway at the top of the rocks. There were 2 diggers and a truck working to push the driftwood and debris off the walk area. People were in their gardens moving debris. At least one building had been flooded and all the stuff was out in the land behind it with people inside brushing out water. The pizza place said it was closed due to storm damage. We spoke to one of the digger drivers and he said they'd been working to clear and open the beach roads, it had been a king tide together with the storm and high winds that had brought the sea levels over the top of the boulder wall that normally protected the town.

The driftwood Hokitika sign had been rebuilt

This is normally a road with a grassed area

Grassed area on left, path to right, all covered with debris

We got back to the car and Jono realised he had lost his reading glasses somewhere on the beach. With the tide coming in there was no chance they'd  still be where they had fallen.
We had lunch on our little deck at the motel and then went to learn how to carve jade. First we had to design what we wanted to make. We were given some design books for inspiration pencils and paper and told to draw our design to the correct size.

Jono chose a fish hook design. I'd  been thinking about what I wanted and I knew I wanted  to incorporate  ferns as it's such a symbol of New Zealand. I also knew I wanted curves, I found  a design that seemed perfect. 3 koru surrounded by 3 twists. Koru are representative of newly unfurling fern fronds and represent new life so there were my 3 children, twists represent unfailing love so surrounding my children was our marriage to each other. Question was, could I carve such a complicated design? One of the tutors drew in a breath and said koru took a lot of time and the twists couldn't  be undercut due to stress factors but it could be done. I hadn't  a clue what he meant  by undercuts but decided to go for it. We drew our designs and then cut them out to make a stencil.
Designs decided we had to choose our Jade. There were boxes of the stuff, different thicknesses and sizes, Steve pulled out 3 bigger sheets and wiped them with a wet cloth so the colours showed. When dry they just looked grey and dusty. He was looking for others but Jono and I both liked different ones of the pieces we'd  seen. Both had a colour change in them, Jono's was mostly yellow in colour with a darker green top, mine went from light green to dark green.

We used our stencils to draw in pencil on the jade and then went over the pencil with sharpies.

Safety first

First job was to remove all the excess jade on the wrong side of the sharpie line using a bench grinder, then we used something like a Dremel with lots of different heads to start to drill and shape the stone, always with water running to cool the drills and to wash away the excess jade.

Removing excess stone around design

Starting to remove excess stone within design

By 5 o clock Jono's was looking almost finished while mine looked barely started. I had a long way still to go!
Luckily the studio would be open the next day so we abandoned our works in progress and went to get out of our dust covered clothes.
There was a 6 pm vigil mass in the church a street away. You couldn't  miss the building, it was big and historic. It also seemed very, very quiet when we arrived at ten to six. I stepped over a low chain and went to check the huge but very definitely closed doors. This didn't look like there was going to be a mass. I walked over to where the noticeboards were. There was a big one saying mass at 6pm, and a little distance away a smaller one saying, "do not enter church or grounds danger earthquake risk".  I hopped back over the ankle high chain stretching around the church grounds and finally noticed the sign which said mass had been moved to the chapel next to sea view lodge. Jono and I searched our maps for sea view lodge. It's not a big town so when I found sea view road and it had a chapel on it on google maps we decided to check it out.
Success! and just in time.

No organ here but the congregation sang anyway. Again a friendly welcome was offered.
Meanwhile Jono had gone back to the beach in the hope he could find his glasses (no chance). He was impressed with the change in the beach road with the wood, stones, earth and boulders moved away.
We decided to eat out and the guide books recommended Fat Pipi. This was popular, most tables were taken and a roaring trade in takeaway was being done as well. We placed and paid for our order and then searched for a place to sit. We found a rickety wooden table for two and pounced on it.

It took a while but eventually  our pizza arrived. It wasn't  a hardship to sit outside although we did resort to putting on our jackets after a while .

We had a wander around town afterwards

Driftwood chair,very comfy

Town clock, for coronation Edward 7 in 1902,acts as a great landmark.