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Published: June 22nd 2007
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When i cycled from Lands End to John'O'Groats in 2002 (is it really five years ago?) my two companions and i would routinely pass our non-cycling time by playing copious amounts of pool. And i would be roundly defeated, decidedly more times than i would emerge triumphant. Then, in 2005, when i travelled to NZ with one of those same companions (the inestimable Ed Hastings) i would, as a rule, issue him with a good thumping. It appears that my pool playing ability increases with each passing year.
The reason, dear reader, that i have assailed you with this supremely entertaining anecdote, is that it brings me to the Wanaka of today. Where, the primary entertainment in this mid-season lull, is the pool competition circuit.
It is a great thing; the first prize is a $150 bar tab and $150 in cash, while second place picks up $50 of each. In other words, reach the final, (sometimes only requiring a win streak of 3 games) and you win money. Quite brilliant i assure you.
This, as i say, is the primary entertainment of Wanaka at the present time. There is a pool competition in Scruffy Murphy's (Sarah's place
of work, more of which i shall tell you later) one in &Bar on Tuesday and a third in Shooters on Wednesday, all of which i played in during our first week here, all of which Sarah dutifully cheered me through, and in all of which i failed to reach the final in. But no matter. Not to be disheartened we found ourselves at the top of town, in a bar called Red Rock, which i had heard, held a competition on a Thursday. It did not. I was now disheartened. Still, Red Rock was decidedly more lively than most other bars in the town centre so Sarah and I thought we would stay there for our Thursday night entertainment. By about 9pm, the place was truly heaving, and to my astonishment and abject disappointment, they we're having a Drum and Bass night.
There is nothing, nothing that less resembles music than Drum and Bass, it is merely a repetitive thumping over which there is the barely audible voice of some bloke chatting about 'banging his ho's' or some such nonsense. Drum and Bass does have one redeeming feature however: watching people dance to it is a highly enjoyable experience,
they sway about for a bit in the lulls of the music, then flail their arms about as if gripped by some epileptic seizure, then revert to a posture which resembles a roosting flamingo (one leg and all) and then repeat the process. Very good. They haven't had one since, which is a shame, as long as you could guarantee me a front row seat and some ear plugs, I'd gladly go.
The next morning Sarah and I awoke to slightly sore heads and, to our joint consternation, a layer of frost on the inside of the van windows. The problem with regard to the frost of course, is that we can't leave the van running all night because we can't afford the petrol, and we therefore have no way of heating the damn thing up. We put our heads together and came up with a solution: the electrical sites on camp sites have a different plug socket to your average wall socket, so we decided that we must find an adaptor for this aforementioned camp site socket. Then hunt took us over hill and down dale, until we found the thing in a lamp shop (or some other
improbable venue), only to discover that you couldn't just buy an adaptor, you had to purchase an adaptor with a 10m lead at the price of $200. At a full 1/12 of the cost of the van itself, this struck me as extravagant, but upon consideration that it gives you free electricity and all of the subsequent benefits i relented and made the purchase. I have to say that it has been a bit of a life saver, we borrowed a heater off a friend, bought a multi-adaptor so we can have lights on, hair dryers in use and charge various other electrical appliances simultaneously. All the things, i suppose, that you take for granted when you live in a house.
After our electrical problems we're solved, we put our minds to remedying the other problem we had faced that morning; namely, the sore heads. We made a big decision: for the next few days at least, we wouldn't go out till late and rise accordingly late. No, we would go to bed early, wake with the sun and go for walks and drives around the lake.
The photos on this blog are the result of one
of those walks and one drive. There are many, many more, but i won't publish them for fear of numbing your ocular senses with too much scenery.
You should, however, be able to get a notion as to how spectacular Lake Wanaka is, it is quite enormous, approximately 192km² and 300m deep at it's deepest. We discovered that it was of a fair size, when we tried to drive round it, we ended up going for 20km, realising that we had not quite rounded the South-west corner, and stopping on the banks for a picnic. After an hour or so, we headed back. Just as we were rounding a sharp corner, an eagle flapped out of the ditch next to the van. It was quite a surreal experience, I've never seen any bird that large anywhere near that close to me before. It was massive. I don't remember too clearly, but I'm sure i saw it later flying just to the right of us, with a cow clutched in it's talons.
I think it was that short 40km drive that put us in mind to go somewhere the next weekend, somewhere over the hills and suitably far away,
to feel like a definite change of scenery. With that in mind we decided that the next Thursday (after the early week pool competitions of course) we would drive the 120 or so kilometres to Queenstown and stay for the weekend before coming back on June 11th. The night before we left we we're sitting outside Scruffy Murphy's talking to one of the many stray cats that inhabit Wanaka, when the manager of Scruffy's came out for a cigarette. Sarah and her were soon deep in conversation about the possibilities of getting a job there. Mel (the manager) said she'd ring Sarah over the weekend and arrange an interview for when we got back.
On that note, i shall close this blog. Tune in next time for stories of Queenstown and beyond, Sarah's job prospects, and much, much more.
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Colin cunningham
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Sheffield
Guys so pleased that the scenery is so spectacular and I have to admit to being jealous..... not an emotion I am familiar with. Nevertheless we back here in blighty can claim an expanse of water as vast and deep as Lake Wanaka, its called Sheffield....... apologies to those of you living in Sheffield my thoughts are with you, except the blokes that have been trapped in the pub for 48hours who don't want to be rescued......