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thursday 3rd november
Our friend and neighbour Leon has left Wanaka for his hometown of Melbourne.
A complete nutter, Leon has provided many hours of entertainment and will be sorely missed, although his Wanaka compilation CD lives on - keep in touch mate!
My knee has not healed as hoped, and currently lacks the strength to absorb impact and compress properly. This is a major source of worry for me - our physio friend Kat has looked at it, and has recommended strengthening of the surounding muscles, in order to support the joint. Hopefully this will make the knee good before Mozine...
On a lighter subject, Wanaka and the Southern Lakes district, has seen temperatures reaching almost 30 degress recently! The same weather that has cut short our season is continuing and now brings us beautiful summer days - in spring!
CJ and I have been spending afternoons lying out around the outflow of Lake Wanaka - around the back of the lake, the source of the Clutha River.
The views are fantastic here, the headland providing a wonderful backdrop which also helps shelter the banks of the river from the wind - creating a natural suntrap where we have been regularly topping up our tans!
Visited Queenstown and visited Boozy - a friend from my '98 visit still residing there. We chilled for a few hours in the sunshine, before heading off to the Queenstown Park frisbee-golf course for a round.
It was great to get back to the course - the first permanent frisbee-golf course in New Zealand - and play some of the classic holes that the park has to offer. The last few holes, played over the park lake, had been altered due to too many players collecting frisbees from underwater and destroying the habitat - but apart from that it was a great trip down memory lane.
Last, but by no means least - the Flipside buggy has been sold!
The 4x4 has shown great service over the last 6 months, taking us to places no normal vehicle could go, and giving us experiences not otherwise achieveable.
Without the 4x4, Andy and I could not have had the journey we have, and not have visited the breadth of locations we have travelled to during the course of the tour. I sold it to a friend of Boozys in Queenstown, where hopefully it will give him the pleasure it has given us...
I leave New Zealand on November 21st, a little over 2 weeks from now - the sad task of packing up lies before me, wrapping up my affairs here.
I am hoping to be back next year, as the projection is for a great season, but who can tell what the future holds? I will be looking to make the most of my remaining time here, any which-way...
Till then, take care...
saturday 19th november
CJ & I were invited to attend a BBQ party, by her employers, Te Tawara. Near the gold-rush tow of Tarras, Cluden is a valley nestling in the mountains quite unintruded upon by townlife.
With no running water, or facilties of any kind - it was back-to-basics campstyle, an idyll lending itself to much frisbee and afternoon walks in the blazing sunshine.
I have seen quite a bit of Boozy recently, a friend from my Queenstown '98 season.
Always been a pleasure to join him for a round of frisbee-golf or to hang out for a while...
Packed much of our snowboard equipment into bags to be sent home as excess baggage - the standard 20kg flight allowance really is piss-poor, and in my opinion its much better to pay $11.50/kg rather than the $85/kg the airlines want, even if you do have to deal with customs at the far end...
On a different note, I finally finished the labour-of-love that was the Wanaka2005 movie - a montgage of all our finer moment throughout the season. It represents a huge amount of work (due in part to astonishing inefficiency), far more than one would initially think!
It was premiered at the pot-luck leaving dinner than CJ held, a relatively down-tempo affair more suited to our extremely tight time schedule. It was good to see all our friends that night - thanks guys, it really meant a lot.
There is still a large amount of skate and snowboard footage held back - to be included in an upcoming street/snowboard-only video. Short movie-clips from this footage will be included on this site when I have more time.
Now all thats left is to leave Wanaka...
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