Another Week in Wanaka

Things have been a bit quieter here this week – no mountain climbing stories of high adventure to report this time but it’s still been great. I’ve got a pretty good routine here, sleep in a bit after all the skiers and snowboarders clomp out in the mornings, have most of the days to myself so I do a bit of work in the mornings, then go for an afternoon walk around the lake or up Mt Iron, before heading back to the hostel to catch up with everyone once they return from the slopes. Yesterday we had absolutely perfect weather again so as I headed down to the Millennium Track, one of my favourite spots, I kept grinning to myself just thinking how lucky I was to be in a place like this. Mind you, I've caught myself doing some other pretty strange things too so it could be that too much time in my own company isn’t entirely healthy.

For instance, I’ve occasionally started singing aloud to my iPod when I’m walking alone, although I’ve justified this as legitimate practice for Canada next year when I’ll have to make sure I announce my presence to any bears in the vicinity. I got a bit of other practice yesterday when I came across some cows on the track unexpectedly, and cows are startling enough when you aren’t expecting them so I imagine bears are even more so. Of course you don’t really expect cows to be particularly savage, but they did significantly outnumber me, it was getting quite late, I don’t know much about cows’ nocturnal behaviour and while I know all about what to do in a bear attack I’ve never really studied up on what to in case of cows so wasn’t sure if I should play dead or not (which again could have been good practice), but decided in the end to just walk past, although we were both watching each other pretty intently as we passed by. On top of this I was already feeling a bit self-conscious around animals as there had been some rabbits (can’t remember the proper collective noun, a herd) watching me try to take pictures of myself with my own camera.

Anyway, this hardly painting a very impressive picture of me – the mountain climbing story was much better – so I think I’ll change the subject with some more pretty scenery.



And here's some of the people I've been staying with.