Four Seasons in one day

Friday, December 31, 2004
Wanaka, South Island, New Zealand
After a four day stretch of glorious sunshine, including Christmas Day, a slow-moving depression has been sitting over NZ and providing regular and copious soakings. Those who are camping (and there are loads, the site outside Wanaka must be holding about 1000 people) are getting a bit muddy, but with the catastrophic events in the next ocean along no-one is complaining too much.

It was certainly an unusual Christmas Day - Andy climbed an adjacent mountain and I gave my knee ligaments the day off, joining the Kiwis on the lake beach, while powerboats whizzed back and forth and tough children splashed in the chilly waters. Christmas in midsummer produes such bizarre things as tinsel-draped trees surrounded by roses in full bloom, and dinner in the garden in daylight at 9pm, with a backdrop of sunlit mountains - very confusing! We can't help feeling that NZ must need a festival for the depths of July and August, when they must be in the thick of the Narnian curse: 'always winter and never Christmas'.

We made the most of the sunny spell with plenty of walking, including lunch below the Rob Roy glacier. This was enlivened by the keas (the alpine parrot) - the signs forbid you to feed them but they circumvent this by brazen thievery. One Japanese couple watched open-mouthed as a splendid specimen landed next to them, then suddenly ripped into their rucksack, deftly extracted a bag of apples and flew away with them stork-style. This walk is accessed by about 30km of gravel road with 9 fords and 9 cattle-grids; as a result Bluesmobile II has shed one or two items not strictly essential to forward motion, so if anyone does see our hubcap, please let us know.

We're off to the glaciers tomorrow, rain or no rain, but it's new year's eve in Wanaka where things are quite lively; 15 year olds whizzing round in cars (with police orbiting at equal speed) and a promised midnight fireworks display over the lake. We watch 2004 hobble, grey-bearded and cloaked, into the sunset with some regret, as it has certainly been a rather good year for us; 1.5 circumnavigations and the fulfilment of many lifetime ambitions, capped with new year under the southern cross. ( if the sky stays clear!!) We wish you all a very happy and peaceful 2005, we thank our current tenants and look forward to a flood of prospective new ones for February (any takers, let us know!!) and to seeing you all again in March. We also hope to be able to reveal the next move by the end of January.
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