We have just finished our first week at Twizel, and it went pretty fast. I am doing 2 hours per day making beds & cleaning the cottages/cabins and units with another lady. Its surprising to see how the camp is so busy with accommodation and yet where the motorhomes park its not as hectic, except our second night when a tour party of 16 motor homes came through. But when I turn up each morning at 9.30 (I know such a rush in the mornings - Bill doesn't start till 10!) the beds are all stripped and ready for making.Where do all the people keep coming from?
Bill has been doing various maintenance jobs eg repairing a couple of ceilings where there were leaks, building a storage cupboard. His days aren't too big, the biggest being 6.5 hours. Peter the camp owner is delighted to have a handyman to catch up with lots of little bits and pieces that is so hard to get builders / servicemen in to such small towns. So with our hours, it has left plenty of time for bike rides and walks. It is a pretty wee town, built to accommodate the workers building the hydro project, but now it is basically tourisim that keeps it thriving, Lake Ruatanawha is only up the road where they host a lot of rowing regatta's, fishing (see Bills ramblings on that below), easy access to a variety of outdoor pursuits. We've even had visitors from up north (Christchurch) drop in for lunch on their way through to Wanaka.
As we had the weekend off, we thought we would head to the canals and do some fishing: Well they said any fool would catch salmon opposite the salmon farm,(Yeah Right) $50 bucks
worth of licence and bait etc and got loads of nothing, followed by ..... yes thats right, more nothing........
Then 10 mins after my licence runs out a smart #@%&* fisherman comes along, tells me how many he's caught and how close I was, but no cigar.....Gee Thanks.... So bought a side of salmon from the shop, literally 100 m from the fishing spot and teeming with wild salmon on the outside of the nets..I'm over this c#@%, getting a TV fitted to watch Geoff Sinclair and some real fishing.
Actually my 24 hr licence started well enough at Lake Benmore where we spent the Friday night, at Falston Camp. The 24hr period started at 1pm and had my first fish 10mins later but alas too small.... so back it went and then nothing........more.
Some excitement was had at 7pm later that day as was casting opposite a salmon farm further up (there are two farms) and a huge 10lb ++ fish rose a metre from me.. gave me the big hairy eyeball..... and carried on up stream, bastard! But that was as close as i got to fish for the rest of the period. So very very sad.
Falston camp is interesting. set on the side of the lake perhaps 15mins round the side 30 mins from Twizel . Its full of very flash caravans tents etc. which they buy a season licence to occupy at $460 Its all got screen cloth up to demarcate the sites ,this is all sorted out in October then the place is left deserted till Xmas with only a few staying the odd weekend in between then and Xmas.So the place had seventy odd setups and 3 other stayers with us over the weekend. Apparently over xmas it really hums!!!!!
The interesting quirk of the place is, there is a movie set consisting of a village out of the bible, that was set up to film the life and times of JC, you know the story, financed by some Japanese Christians, the money fell thru b4 filming started, & is now mothballed, but is fenced off (probably an acre),smack in the middle of the camp, and falling into disrepair with a caretaker who is slowly going stir crazy (so isolated ,been there 6 years) but had a good chat to, the company has mostly paid creditors and is hoping to get it going, so who knows???? the fake buildings are so good, google Falston movie set or Kingdom Come if you're interested.
Sunday night we are sitting on the side of Lake Ohau, 30 mins out of Twizel and just had a wee walk up a track that intersects with the A2O (Alps to Ocean) cycle way which basically goes from Mt Cook to Oamaru with the odd side trip, which we have dipped into on a couple of ocassions. Could be a good one to do at some stage. Have a look at the address, (www.alps2ocean.com),think we'll leave it till we are down again as there's probably a coupla weeks in it at a leuseriuly pace and we are due back in Nelson soon for a quick clean up b4 Xmas in Wellington. But so scenic, some of the photos on the blog last week of Mt. Cook were from the cycleway.The more we see the more there is to see.
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| Lake Ohau |
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Snap Inspection of culinary readiness
from Helen & Ralph |
On parting with Nick & Jacky we drove back to Ocean beach to spend more time. We stayed here 3 years ago almost to the day. Ocean Beach sits in Palliser Bay and is super exposed to the south, however weather permitting is a superb ocean beach, several kilometres long, great for fossicking and fishing, (yeh right don't start me on the bloody fishing again) & the Rimataka Cycle way which passes thru on its way round the coast to Eastbourne. We were only able to complete a third of it for various reasons, it was a slightly more challenging ride than some of our last excursions. It was VERY windy with a strong northerly dropping over the escarpment's and whistling out the valleys, we were reduced to walking on several occasions, the wind hitting from all directions, when we weren't bogged down in the coarse sand. However it was still a stunningly hot beautiful day and we will complete the ride at some stage, possibly from the other end.
