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.

Finally, I am complete again, I’ve been reunited with my towel which has been missing since the disastrous Mt. Owen trip.

Huge sentimental value seeing as I .. umm… well ‘borrowed’ it when I was in yosemite (California) And have treasured it ever since. Indeed – as you can see from this extract from The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy – they’re massively useful things

Towels

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Looks like climbing in Thailand might be all right. My friend Domhnall sent me a link to info on the place.. and I quote

The boats are now running fairly regularly and are getting better.

There is no flooding, the power is fine and all the food is fresh and boated in daily.

We have all seem the grisly pictures in the media. Thankfully they are nothing to do with Railay, Ao Nang and indeed most of Thailand. If you have booked a holiday in Railay, the best thing you can do is to turn up and enjoy yourselves. The locals are panicking that everyone is going to cancel, and that they will lose their businesses as a result. They would like it known that they are all open as usual, and are looking forward to seeing old friends, and making new ones.

So who knows.. guess will find out when I get there.

Murchison for New Years was excellent. Really excellent. Here you can see me in the middle of one of the bigger rapids we went through.

It was kinda exciting to say the least. I wasn’t having an incredibly successful day really, took 2 swims when I didn’t manage to get my roll working…. more practice needed for sure.

New Years was great fun though.. it was lovely at the campsite, knew heaps of people from caving & tramping & climbing circles. Also, someone had caught a wild pig and donated it to the campsite! so we had roast pork for dinner. Quite yum (sorry to all the Vege’s out there). And just chilling out with the great friends I’ve made here, it really was an excellent way to see in the New Year… The one making the face is Warick!

p.s… that pic of ‘me in one of the bigger rapids’ wasn’t me – nor even of a river I’m going to be attempting for a very very long time – if ever. It was a trip that my friend Tim was on last year. Warick says it’s pretty ok.. but I have my doubts!

Headed back down to ChCh as I kinda want to get some work done as I’ve got a project which has to get finished before I head to Thailand, and I’ve got 2 irish friends arriving within the week that I really want to spend time with. Fun times :)

Went over to Dinner with John and Maeve for dinner on the 29th (thanks – was yum) decided to go and do a few easy routes on the 30th..

So climbed for a couple of hours. Great fun, here you can see Maeve climbing with a broken arm. Now that’s dedication that is.

In the evening I headed up to Murchison to get a couple of days kayaking in and also to hang out for New Years.