Power mad - February 18th

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As Mike Patton once quipped while playing a 'heavy' music festival "So where are all the fat people?!"

Honestly I have yet to see an overweight traveller under the age of 50 here... could this mean that the world is finally fighting back against the spectre of obesity that has been holding us down and raping us in the mouth with a hot dog these last few years or does it mean that all of the fat people are staying at home, ashamed to go out into the world? Hopefully that's not the case.



Today I took a trip (figuratively) back in time; I drove to Manapouri, a small town where my family used to holiday every other year when I was a kid... if I'm not mistaken, it was also the location where we spent the Easter that I got pneumonia! Happy to not have a repeat performance of that!
The day started with a fairly slow drive, the old couple in front of me were crawling along at 80km/h and I was in no rush so I just followed along listening to an album by the red hot chili peppers. When we got to Manapouri and the speed limit went down to 80 the elderly couple obligingly slowed down to 60... for some reason.
Drove around the town... which didn't take long because it's a fairly small place; actually I like that it hasn't yet succumbed to the level of tourism and the associated expansion that has happened in places like Wanaka, Te Anau and of course Queenstown. found a park under a tree to keep my car from turning into a bloody oven in this baking heat!
I had no real plans coming here, I just walked into the info centre to see what is on offer, a boat ride across the lake to see an underground power station and a quick photo-stop looking out over Doubtful Sound? Sounds good (sorry credit card)!

I have an hour to kill so I do a quick bush walk and come back by following the shoreline (as much as possible) I really do love this part of the country, there are various trees that seem much more prevalent here which tends to give the area it's own unique smell.

The boat trip across the lake is predictably beautiful, I got talking to a couple down on holiday from Auckland... that is the great thing about these sorts of tours, you can usually kick off a pretty good conversation with fairly minimal effort, find out a few things, exchange travel stories etc... it did mean that I'd keep having to remind myself to check out the beautiful lake/mountain scenery.

once across the lake we took a bus trip up a mountain to get a view of Doubtful Sound... which we kind of didn't get because it was so misty... that was cool though because it made the whole valley look vaguely prehistoric... no wonder that they filmed Jurassic Park 3 somewhere in that area. suddenly (once we're all back on the bus) the mist clears a bit so we quickly hop out and get slightly better photos.
Back on the bus and onwards to the underground power station... I'll be honest, the station itself is kind of cool but once you're there you're just on an observation platform so there isn't' much to do, as a result the boat ride, doubtful sound and driving through 2km on tunnels to get down to the power station are a better part of that particular trip.
For the boat ride back I travel on the top level of the boat to take in the great views, annoyingly though I'd keep seeing these guys in my peripheral vision giving me the evils... no I am NOT checking out your girlfriends/wives, I can see beautiful girls anywhere but these mountains and this lake are only happening here, chill the hell out!

Back to Te Anau for the last time, heading off to Queenstown tomorrow. Finish the night off with some delicious (albeit expensive) venison steaks, another walk to the bird sanctuary/park and then some more Jodi Picoult.

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