At short notice decided to head to Wanaka on Friday to get some climbing done. The weather forecast from metvuw looked kinda bad, but we (Maeve & John and I) decided to head anyway.
Beautiful drive down, stopping for many ice-creams on the way. John defiantly winning the ‘who can get the biggest ice-cream competition’ by challenging the ice-cream-girl to see how much she could get on the cone. Neat trick. (Very Berry Boysenberry & Hokey Pokey coming out favourite). (Boysenberry is quite like raspberry ripple, and Hokey Pokey kinda similar to Honeycomb Crunch – for the ice-cream gurus out there)
We stayed that night at the DOC Campground just outside of Wanaka, a pretty nice spot down by the river.
Saturday dawned.. damply.. so climbing was out – but we headed to town and hired some mountain bikes, and did some easy trails. I called a halt early as the bike I’d hired was (in my opinion) a tad dangerous – seeing as I had no front brakes.. (no, when I’d hired it they worked fine :P but they were these fancy-shmancy disk brakes and had probably got some oil onto them to they no longer worked)
Here you can see a pretty fun movie (3 megs)of John cleaning off his mountain bike by cycling it into the lake..
That night though was the total highlight for me – we headed to the Wanaka Cinema. And it’s a total must do if you’re in Wanaka. Absolutely defiantly. It’s just the best place. It’s a single screen cinema.. they show all sorts of interesting films (as well as current ones). They have delicious home made ice creams (I had 3 – Passionfruit, and 2 of the yum strawberry and white chocolate). They have an interval (10 mins) during which you can buy freshly baked cookies (I think I’m going to mail them for the recipe). The cinema itself is a Wanaka institution I reckon.. the seats are all couches (and more) that people have donated.. apparently there’s a seat from a Japanese airliner in there – I didn’t look to see it, and no one knows how it comes to be there. Our seats – as you can see below, were in the back of a Morris Minor.
Honestly, it’s just the best place, really worth seeing.
Sunday – got up at 8 ish – still a tiny bit of drizzle, but we were determined to get some climbing done. Headed to ‘The Tombstone’ a monolith about a 10 min drive from town. We climbed four routes, this one a trad route (John leading) aptly named ‘The Crack’
And at 1pm the skies opened, but it was time to be heading back.
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