Remember how I said the storm wasn’t going to be a problem?

Turns out I spoke a bit too soon. At 7:00 PM the wind was gusting and the rain was teeming down, but the tent was holding up fine (though it was very noisy inside) and we were planning to stay put for the night. But as we were getting ready for bed around 9:30, the owners “evacuated” us down to the main house. Apparently things were going to get a lot worse overnight. So we spent a fitful night listening to the wind howl, and woke up with no power, no cell service, no internet, and all the roads closed. Before you start feeling too sorry for us though, I’ll point out that we simply headed back up to the tent (which had survived the night just fine) and spent the day reading, playing Yahtzee, and enjoying the stunning views. Here is what we had for dinner -not exactly roughing it.

We were fine, but others were not so lucky. The rain caused serious flooding – here is a sequence of pictures from our tent showing the river early in the storm, yesterday after it had passed (but the water was still rising), and then again today as it was beginning to ebb. The sequence shows land in the middle of the river, then all water, then land beginning to re-emerge.

And note the trees all under water in this one.

Yesterday the roads were all blocked or under water, but by today they were beginning to open up. Here are a few photos showing the scale of the destruction on the roads. – and this is after the cleanup is well underway.

I have to say that we feel vey lucky. Four days ago we stayed in Gisborne, and today Gisborne is completely isolated and running low on supplies. In Hawkes Bay, where we were staying, tens of thousands of people are without power, likely for days, and perhaps for weeks. Homes were damaged or destroyed. All that happened to us was that out “glamping” was a little more like “camping” – we were without power and internet, and couldn’t take a shower for two days. And we experienced it all with this view.

As I said, we feel very lucky.