Hello, Wanaka!!!

February 26, 2011

We are now in Wanaka, New Zealand!!!  It is a beautiful part of New Zealand!!!  It is quite small, but absolutely gorgeous!  We arrived here at approximately 7pm this evening.  The hostel we are staying at is awesome!  There are 6 bunks in each room, a bathroom (with a shower, YEAHHHH!!!) and a small kitchen.  They are perfect!  It is like our own little cabins!  I took a small walk around town when we got here, just to take a few pictures and check it out.  Tomorrow we are going mountain biking for four hours.  I am a bit nervous about how my knee will feel, but I am confident it will be ok.  I am excited, as I hear it is pretty awesome, lots of down hill stuff!!!  Sounds like a pretty intense adventure!  (Don’t worry mom, I am sure we will be wearing helmets!!!)  After biking I plan on making a trip to the post shop, and maybe just do more exploring of the town. 

As for our groups itinerary… We are supposed to head back to Christchurch in a few days, however, with the earthquake the hostel we were supposed to stay at is not running.  We are not sure exactly what our plans will include, but we did discuss them today.  We want to look into helping out the victims of Christchurch, so we are doing a bit of research on what opportunities are available for us to help out.  If we would do that, we would just camp out at a car park somewhere outside of Christchurch.  If not, we will take our time heading towards Christchurch, then the night before we fly out we would tent out in a park somewhere.  Our flight leaves early, and I guess we have to be at the Christchurch airport at 6am – so either way we are going back.  I am a bit nervous about this, as I hear there are still aftershocks, and after feeling the quake, I am not sure if I want to really see the destruction that it has caused.  I have seen pictures in the papers every day, and have seen a bit on the news, but I am still scared of what it might look like in person.  I will keep you all posted on it, and let you know what we eventually do decide.  For now, we have the next three nights here, in Wanaka.

This is just a glimpse of the random fun times that our group has throughout the day... Bruce randomly put a batman mask on, and put his camouflage poncho on, and hid in the tree... it was pretty funny!!!

Myself, scared of the batman Brucie in the tree! 

View on our way to Wanaka

We stopped to check out the world's best rapids!  Only a handful of people have kayaked through here.... 

It was pretty intense!

Here are our vans that we have had the entire trip.  The white one is "White Knuckle" and the red one is "Red Rocket".  They are both very s-l-o-w moving... but lots of fun!!! 

Here are our little cabins that we are staying at in Wanaka. 

Lake Wanaka, just a 2 minute walk from my front door.  Beautiful.

The sunset over Lake Wanaka tonight.  It was beautiful! 

Here is the park, right in front of our hostel! 

A building in Wanaka.  It just looked neat!  People out and enjoying the sun!!

Dave had never had a thumb war... so Liz thought she would teach him! 

The game got pretty intense!!!