The Year so far

I thought I would post a blog site this year, hopefully I will be able to keep it up, I guess if I can type during the down times at work and cut and paste it into the blog I should be able to keep up.

At the end of last year we went into Doubtful Sound, the weather was fine, for which Dave apologised. And I will upload a few of the photo's to the site. Its just a magic place, but has a little too few wine bars for my taste. We sailed with Dave on the original boat on the Sound, purpose built for tourists in 1972. It was a grand old lady, and Dave was very much in love with it. He wants to keep on sailing until he loses his sight. We had a tourist boat across Lake Manupouri and then Dave picked us up and took us over the hill to Doubtful.

We spent a night on the boat, Allen kayaked, and swam - very brave. It has to be hot for me to get in the water and it was South Island warm so I was not going to be wet for all the tea in china, I didn't really get out of the fleece jacket that much.

Doubtful Sound Day One

Doubtful Sound Day Two

By the time we got back to Te Anau, Shels and John had decided they weren't going to pick us up, so we needed to catch the bus back. It was 11am and the next bus left at 5pm, so we went and had a bit of lunch and then visited with Nancy and Lewis for a while. They were both in fine form, and gave us a bit more to eat in case we starved on the way to Queenstown. Dale, Mathew and Warren were there also and we had a bit of banter about high cholesterol and gammy knees, both of which seem to be my fault.

We picked up Mels Wedding Album that Shels left with Nancy and Lewis and headed off to Queenstown. About 20mins out of Te Anau we had to wait for a passenger the driver had forgotten to pick up. The owner bought out the passenger and got a speeding ticket for her trouble. Needless to say the driver was in deep disgrace.

Ah Queenstown - I hired a crib halfway up Queenstown hill, what a view, and we chucked out the Hartley's who had been using the room when we were on the Sound and they went off to Frankton Camping ground. The room didn't have such a magic view as Shels and Johns, but was comfortable and we were able to spread out after the boat.

Shels, Allen and Lois eventually went to Skippers Canyon for a two day hike and they were coming out on New Years Eve, so this left John, Wayne, Aaron and myself at a loose end in Queenstown. Aaron seemed to be content with his game boy, and books and TV (He was the only one who could get it to go). Wayne wanted to see the cricket, and John and I took a trip on the Earnslaw across the lake to Walters Peak where we watched a sheep being shorn. (Coals to Newcastle for me). We had a lovely lunch out on the terrace and wandered around the garden.

When Allen and Shels came back from their adventure all they wanted to do was lie around, so we watched the New Years Eve celebrations from the deck on the crib. You can see from the photo we had a good view.

We spent the next couple of days in Queenstown, eating, drinking, looking at real estate, getting ideas for our house from the really expensive ones down here. But I had lost my camera by that stage so the only photos are the ones from the Ernslaw.

Queenstown