Onwards to the south

After a peaceful night at the side of Lake Pukaki, we continued southwards. OOOPS – Bruce accidentally sounded the horn as we pulled out of our parking space. Hope it didn’t wake our close neighbours up!

Normally we would stop for a soak at Omarama, but this time we decided to keep driving. I really wanted to go back to Wanaka, to approach a few galleries to see if they would show some of my paintings. The idea was that we would spend a couple of nights in Wanaka but found that as it was still a holiday weekend, the camps disallowed dogs. Therefore, it became a day trip to do a shop, and to visit a couple of galleries.

To get to Wanaka, we had to travel Lindis Pass. This is usually a very scenic trip, but as usual, the skies were overcast, and we could not get the full effect of the beautiful scenery.

In the middle of the Pass is a historic town called Tarras, and we stopped there for another look.

Bruce has decided that this trip is to be the quest to find the perfect cheese scone. The one he had at Otira remained at the top of the the table, but he had to try one from Tarras. Although it was good, it was not good enough to topple the Otira Hotel off it’s spot.

As usual, the Lake Wanaka was beautiful, but there were people everywhere, and we were lucky to get a suitable park at all. The traffic coming towards us from Wanaka was a continuous stream, as the festival Wheels over Wanaka had just finished. We saw all sorts of big machinery coming away from the town – talk about carbon burning.

The galleries I visited had beautiful paintings and they both expressed an interest in my work. I need to develop and proper portfolio that I can email them. The gallery I visited in Geraldine was also keen on my work, but they take 50% of the sale. I am not sure about Wanaka.

Once I had finished my visits we carried on to Luggate, a town not far from Wanaka where we stayed at a Park Over Property owned by Motorhome association members. This was a bonus for the dogs as well, because the lady of the house worked at a petfood factory down the road, and they manufactured dog treats from venison, and we were given samples.

The tube things at the back of the photo are the trachea of deer, stuffed with dried marrow etc. I had temporarily placed them in the fruit bowl, but Hunter thought they smelt really, really good, so he managed to steal one. Luckily, I discovered it before he had scoffed the lot.

After our night at Luggate we are heading towards Queenstown – or rather Frankton, on the other side of Queenstown, where we are booked at the Driftaway Holiday Camp – our first camp stay since we left home.