Friday 6th January- Time to sort things out

We had a much better night’s sleep now we have our new underwear and also it was a bit warmer overnight than the previous night.

We needed to organise the tent a bit to make it more homely and provide more ground space and the result after 30 minutes was a positive improvement. We are staying about 1.5 kilometres outside of Te Anau at the Te Anau Lakeside Holiday Park (www.teanau.info) which so far has been up to our expectations. It’s not a huge site but it has a capacity to receive everything from backpackers and small transit type vans up to large Australian built caravans and holiday huts of varying sizes.

Most important is that the Shower and Loo facilities are very good and clean and the kitchens which are complete with large multi user refrigerators and freezers, hobs and even ovens. There are also pan scrubbers and washing up cloths and so you lack nothing. Only the chef is missing.

There are also two large seating areas where you can eat your kitchen prepared dinner, watch the television or use the internet computers which are freely provided assuming you cough up the £ 3.00 per hour demanded by the slot machines.

The site is not that full although it’s the start of a public holiday called Waitangi day which is the day the treaty was signed with the Maori.

During a discussion with the travel agents on our Doubtful Sound day out they mentioned that tourism in South Island, and presumably it’s the same in North Island, is down by up to twenty five percent. That is certainly a lot and it seems to show with many if not most motels showing vacancy signs and when compared to our trip at a similar time last year when most of the signs showed No Vacancy. The world economy is impacting on this country as well as they rely heavily on tourism.

We spoke to Brian who is now back in NZ and back in Taipa in his own house which we guess he will appreciate very much after their amazing travels in South America. We are not sure we would experience all of the things that Brian and Sheila did. We do like comfortable beds etc.

Our tent is very good and we are pleased with our choice and also very glad that we bought the large and very comfortable King size inflatable bed as it makes such a difference to sleep well.

We are still taking it easy after the long tiring drive down here and so we will take it easy until we take a trip up to Milford Sound but we fear that the weather may have changed back to the normal grey and cloudy with occasional rain. So we will go to Milford on Sunday or Monday but as it’s a public holiday perhaps Monday may be better, let’s see.