Having finally made it to the West Coast, ODT regional editor Dave Cannan and illustrations editor Stephen Jaquiery begin Day Two of their journey and continue to meet some fascinating characters.
A sleep interrupted several times throughout the night by incessant rain is finally ended by a rhythmic "clank, clank, clank" and regular gasps of breathing.
It's just after 7am and 68-year-old Lou Armstrong, as he does most mornings, is pumping some serious weights in the front room.
He had warned us last night about the workout and hoped he wouldn't wake us too early but we'd only been dozing anyway.
The sound of rain on the corrugated iron roof and the flow from a hole in the spouting outside the bedroom window had fluctuated between steady and heavy.
I suspect Coasters get sick of hearing about how much it rains in their part of the world, just like Dunedin folk tire of defending its reputation for polar-like temperatures all year round, so I didn't make a big deal out of it over breakfast, Lou's muted reaction proof enough it was nothing out of the ordinary.
The roast venison meal, washed down by a couple of bottles of shiraz, had been a memorable meal the night before as we got to know our host a little better.
We learned he was born and raised in Rotorua, belongs to the Ngati Whakaue tribe, an urban subtribe of Te Arawa (his mother was Maori, his father Scottish) and went to school with Howard Morrison (now Sir Howard), who keeps in contact with his old friend.
Indeed, I have spent the night in the same single bed used by Sir Howard on his last visit down south.
Since those early days, Lou has crammed so many adventures and memories into his life he's tempted to write a book about it (the title of which can't be repeated!); he's been married three times, has "gone bust" once, been a forestry worker, deer culler, possum trapper, ship's steward, diver, fisherman, helicopter pilot, developer and, latterly, a carver who runs a Maori art gallery in South Westland, helped by daughter Jacqui.
Many of those adventures are captured in the dozen photograph albums he brings out to show us, each one sparking another memory, another story and more often than not, lots of laughter.
One of the notable exceptions is the tragic tale contained in a bundle of newspaper clippings dealing with United Airlines flight 811 from Hawaii to Auckland on February 25, 1989.
Nine people died when an explosion blew a hole in the fuselage of the 747 when 20,000 feet above the Pacific.
Sitting in row 21d was a Masterton pilot, Graeme (Lou) Armstrong, going back to New Zealand for his mother-in-law's funeral.
A year later he would tell the Evening Post newspaper that the tragedy had changed his life forever.
"Nine people lost their lives; that's the problem I have. I just felt a little guilty that I'm still here and they aren't.
"I crashed a helicopter and that was nothing compared to this".
So, how come a man of the world who's worked as a heli-logger pilot in Borneo and a tuna spotter in Ensenada, North America, ends up settled in such a remote place as Whataroa?
The short version of a long story is he was returning from a trip from Nelson to Queenstown about 12 years ago when he stopped in the town and saw the former tearooms were empty, having shifted across the road on State Highway 6.
Lou had begun carving full-time and was thinking about building a Maori art gallery but in the old building he saw an opportunity.
He managed to rent it with a right of purchase and c'est la vie, it became the Kotuku Gallery.
Initially he lived there with his wife Veronica but she didn't like the place and left.
Lou says he stayed because he feels at home here; there is a spirituality emanating from the nearby mountains that comforts and embraces him.
And even though he goes away from time to time, he finds the place calls him back again.
It's also the place where Lou has carved a large chunk of ancient whalebone which, he insists, has exerted its own spiritual influence and power on him, his family and many of the people who have travelled to Whataroa from all parts of the globe.
It is these stories that aroused my interest on my first visit to the gallery a few weeks earlier and one of the main reasons why I have come all the way back again.
Lou began carving when he was 15. He learned a little of the art from watching an uncle and later in life he was influenced by Picton carver Pita Rua who, he says, has helped him a lot.
But he is mainly self-taught.
Once he decided to come back from overseas in the early 1990s, he shifted to Nelson and looked for work as a pilot. But he opted instead for carving.
People liked his work and instead of giving a lot of it away, he decided to sell it, hence the shift to Whataroa to set up his own gallery and Maori art museum.
A few years ago, Lou's quest to find some whalebone to carve was answered when Ngai Tahu's Mark Solomon alerted him to the discovery of a sperm whale jawbone found buried in some sand hills on the Chatham Islands.
The bone measured about 6m and had to be cut in half so it could be transported.
From it, Lou began to carve numerous pieces of art and and sold them but it wasn't long before he and Jacqui began to notice the effect the carved bone seemed to have on some of the buyers or those visiting the gallery.
Lou tells of the time he gave a piece of the bone to an Israeli woman who had asked to buy some.
She hugged him and began to cry but left without explaining her reaction.
Her husband told him before they had left home a psychic had told her she would meet a man who would give her a carving that she would take back to Israel and bury in the desert for her protection.
Lou still doesn't know why he gifted her the bone - "something made me do it".
He and Jacqui have several other similar stories to tell, including the time a group of old Maori women (kuia) came into the gallery unannounced and said they had come to see the whalebone.
Jacqui went with them and told them the bone was called Te Mana Nui but they began to pray and chant karakias, making her place her hand on the bone.
It was, she says, a really emotional moment, and soon she learned it had another name, one she felt she could not tell anyone, even her father.
Lou had begun to carve a set of four traditional Maori weapons from the bone, comprising a tewhatewha (long club), a maipi or taiaha (close combat spear), a maripi (ceremonial knife) and a toki-pou-takata (an adze), a task that took him 18 months to complete.
Some time later, a man Jacqui had met while in Franz Josef to watch a play and invited back to the gallery asked if he could pick up the taiaha Lou had carved.
He then told her the bone was called Paikea Nuku Roa, the same name she had learned from the old women.
Convinced there was something special about the bone, Lou sent a piece to the Rafter radiocarbon laboratory at the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences in Lower Hutt in October 2002 to have it carbon dated and was stunned to learn an accelerator mass spectrometry result put it at 3496 years old.
"There have been so many strange things with the bone. I feel so blessed and privileged to have carved it.
"But now I don't know that I would have carved it if I'd known how old it was. It's so special," he said.
It's also quite valuable, with Lou hoping to sell the Maori weapon set for as much as $400,000 although Jacqui says she'd rather it wasn't sold.
She knows there is an emotional attachment for her father and admits it will be a little sad when the last small piece of whalebone is sold.
For Lou though there is a practical reason for wanting to find a substantial buyer for the set.
He has made a significant investment in Whataroa, having set up a small deer farm on the northern side of town and is already starting work on his dream project about 7km to the south, an upmarket tourist park complex, complete with pond and chalets, opposite Lake Wahapo.
But, not long before we arrived in Whataroa, Lou's hopes were dashed when the West Coast Development Trust turned down his application for funding to complete the park, without giving him any reason for the refusal.
What annoys and baffles him the most, he says, is that he was given every indication to expect a positive outcome when dealing at length with trust staff who assisted with his application.
The trust, which trades as Development West Coast, was set up by the Labour government in 2001 with seed finance of $92 million as compensation for the loss of the native timber industry.
Whataroa was one of the towns to suffer because of that policy, losing its sawmill and about 60 jobs when it shut down about 12 years ago.
Ironically, Lou drives past the old mill most days when he goes to his deer farm, complete with an impressive deer antler archway at the main entrance.
As we drive back from a tour of both properties, Lou is in philosophical mood, torn between a determination to finish the tourist park so he can give something back to the Whataroa district, and dealing with the financial reality of the trust's decision not to fund the project.
"Maybe it's time to step back and take a deep breath, to reassess the future," he says wistfully.
"All it is, is work really, getting stuck in, getting creative and making things with my hands. And I love working," he adds.
Back in Whataroa we pack our bags and say our goodbyes out on the main street.
I can't help but notice the banners fluttering above us are Ministry of Economic Development issue, proclaiming April as "Buy Kiwi Made Month", even though its now mid-October.
Perhaps that says it all about a town which since its beginnings back in the 1860s has seen the ebb and flow of prosperity through gold mining, flax milling, timber production and dairying.
We left with slightly heavy hearts.
Lou seemed a genuine chap, not afraid to work hard to make his dreams come true.
It may be that he simply picked the wrong time financially to launch his new venture.
I promise to make some phone calls to see if I can get any answers to the questions he had posed.
Lou offered to put us up for a second night but mindful of the long drive home, we headed south in the late afternoon, hoping to get quite a few kilometres behind us.
But first we called into Okarito, home to celebrated author Keri Hulme, photographer Andris Apse and, more importantly to Stephen, many species of wading birds, including the rare white heron (kotuku).
We hadn't even reached the tiny, former gold-mining settlement when the vehicle crunched to a halt on the gravel road as Stephen spotted not one but two of the elegant birds close by in the lagoon, so close I was amazed they didn't immediately take off.
But as Stephen stalked them around the edge of the lagoon they paid him no mind, being far too focused on their feeding.
A quick circuit of the village failed to unearth any sign of Hulme or Apse so we returned to State Highway 6 with Fox Glacier pencilled in as the most likely stopover for the night.
Fox Glacier might be one of the great tourist spots on the West Coast but when it comes to cost of living expenses then it's not a place you want to linger for long.
Petrol, for example, was about $2.14 a litre and because they didn't have the right brand we couldn't use the company card.
Stocking up on the essentials like bread, milk, butter, eggs and something grape-ish to wash down the whitebait patties for dinner that night knocked another hole in the cash reserves.
But the price for a double cabin at the spick and span holiday camp was reasonable and the facilities - including more than one channel on the TV - were more than adequate.
Time before turning in to nip down Cooks Flat Rd for a wander around Lake Matheson before the light faded.
It's a beautiful, placid spot and even at dusk the lake's trademark mirror image was well worth the walk.
Stephen was still bird-watching with that big lens of his but didn't bother to focus on the shot of the night, a couple of mating pukeko not far from the car park!
Back at the cabin we drained the last of the wine and were about to hit the sack when the mournful cry of a morepork had us scurrying outside, with headlamps and torches, trying, without success, to spot the night caller.
