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Entry 314, on 2006-04-24 at 13:39:56 (Rating 1, Activities)

This is an update on our activities of the last week or two. I had about a week off over Easter and spend most of that time in central Otago: Arrowtown, Glenorchy, Wanaka, and Naseby. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, the main reason for the visit was to attend the Warbirds Over Wanaka 2006 air show. You can read a brief description in my blog, and see photos and comments in my web site at owen2.otago.ac.nz/warbirds.

We stayed in a rented house in Arrowtown and Sharyn did the Lake Hayes Triathlon on the Friday. The weather was very pleasant, as you can see in the picture included here (only if you are viewing this from my main blog) but the lake water must have been a bit chilly because there had been a light frost that morning!

The next day we drove up to Wanaka in my father-in-law's camper-van (which is really a small bus). I must admit I often find these vehicles annoying when travelling behind one, but when using one they are very convenient. Being able to sit in the bus, and download and process my photos from Warbirds while enjoying a hot coffee, while everyone else was trying to get out of the car park at the end of the show was really handy!

I had never been to Glenorchy before, and it was good to make that trip - also in the camper-van. It is the starting point for many famous tramping tracks - which we didn't have time to do - but we did go for a short cruise on the lake. Unfortunately the weather wasn't so good that day.

On the way back we stayed over night at Naseby, another small town I had never been to before. We enjoyed the good weather the next day and went mountain bike riding over the forest tracks in the area. That was a good way to have a look around and explore the country.

We took the road through Middlemarch on the way back to Dunedin from Naseby. I was surprised at how quick and easy that trip was. Maybe I'll use that as a standard way to get to Central in future - although snow would be a problem in winter.

Maybe snow won't be as big a problem for us at it has been in the past though, because we have also bought a new car to replace our rather ancient Ford Sierra wagon. Its a Subaru Legacy, which has 4 wheel drive, so it should handle winter weather conditions better than the Sierra, which always handled rather poorly.

Sharyn and I used the Legacy to go through to Central and back (the rest of our group went in the camper-van) and it did quite well, apart from a problem with an emission sensor which held us up for a couple of hours - rather disappointing when we had only had it a day! It isn't in the same league for fun driving as my Prelude, which has a lot more power and better handling, but its still cruises along rather nicely, and is very comfortable to drive in. Its Sharyn's car really - if I had been getting a Legacy I would have been tempted by the twin-turbo model!

Link at: http://owen2.otago.ac.nz/warbirds

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