Keeping abreast of the news

Tuesday 21st February

Gidday readers (of which I detect are a dwindling number but I wouldn't read this drivel either!)

Last night we celebrated OF1's birthday in some style.  We booked into the Redcliffe in Te Anau which looks like a red corrugated iron shed. Inside it is cosy with lots of memorabilia on the walls - quite unlike most NZ restaurants to date.  It had been used by the Lord of the Rings cast and has the T-shirt to prove it!.  See the image below (sorry that the glass has caused a reflection) and you can make out Ian McKellen's signature.

For first course, OF1 had pulled pork fajitas with red and green salsa and I had hare croquettes with blue cheese aoili.  I enjoyed both but not together.  This prompted OF1 to ask the last time I had hare and I replied, "when I was 27"!! (For those of you struggling it is word play on hare and hair).  Main courses were lamb cutlets for the birthday girl and venison (medium-rare) for me - mine was not too deer!! (Sorry).  The accompanying vegetables were delicious and, interestingly, did not include potatoes. Mine was on a bed of mashed pumpkin, for example.  It was a great meal and the special occasion was truly marked in style.

We woke up this morning to an amazing sight out of the window.  The dawn light and clouds conspired to make the hay field a bright, fiery orange with dark mountains, rainbow and a pink clouds.  We were out in the communal dressing gown trying to get THE picture but the camaras could not quite capture the atmospheric view.

We had our last delicious breakfast with our hostess, Jane, and said a fond farewell to the blue cottage.  We fired up Tanya, programmed Bin and woke up Kivin - the team was off again! 'The open road", said toad..

Today we travelled from Te Anau to Wanaka - just a three hour drive retracing our steps of four days ago.  So it was up over the spectacular Crown Range and this time I have remembered to note that the road sides were a mass of lupins.

We stopped for a late coffee at the hamlet/village of Cardrona.  It was an old gold mining place and is now a small ski resort.  The hotel was built in 1885 and is regarded as very old in NZ.  It was a very quaint place for coffee with a log fire, hunting trophies (boar heads, etc.) on the wall (the answer is yes!  I did make the joke I always make, "it must have been travelling at a hell of a rate...."). There was a glass section in the floor in the middle of the bar room showing the shaft of an old gold mine.

Further down the road there is a fence festooned with bras for about 100m - there are hundreds and hundreds of them to support (sorry again) breast cancer charities.  It was a picture opportunity and a reminder to support the charity.

We arrived in Wanaka for lunch by the lake.  A stroll and a coffee in town before booking up bike hire tomorrow. The weather forecast is ok but not special so we opted not to go up into the mountains but be taken 30 km away in a mini-bus and dropped off with two bikes!  We should enjoy a leisurely, off road, ride through a valley then around Lake Wanaka.  The good news is that there is a café at half way. To warm up I have just completed a 30 minute run along the lake shore which was a step too far. However, I have found that a shower then cold beer have wonderful restorative powers.

Our motel unit is as clean as all of them with the best cooking facilities to date.  This includes, for the first time, a full cooker so we changed our plans and as I write this I can smell the joint of lamb roasting in the oven!  We then plan to hit the bars in town, about 2 minutes walk away.  Are we going to paint the town red?  No, just very pale pink then an early night before the Tour de Wanaka....