Fare Thee Well, Wanaka
Football, Rugby, and Crepes: 9/22
Our last four or five days in Wanaka were really sad; it was almost worse than when we left home. When we left home, we knew we would be coming back in three months. We have no idea whether we’ll ever come back to New Zealand, much less Wanaka. We made a list of the new places we wanted to go to and the old ones to revisit. Our first day back from Milford, we watched Wake play Elon in football and then walked into town for brunch at Charlie Brown Crepes. Jackson and I split a Classic (egg and cheese) and a Pomme D’Amour (caramelized apples, caramel, and whipped cream) and they were both really good. The apple one especially was complete genius; simple, but amazing flavor. I did some schoolwork back at the house and then Jackson went across the street to the park to play with the rugby ball. We kicked and threw the ball around for almost an hour and a half, almost until dinner. After dinner, we watched about the first half of Batman Begins. My dad brought seven movies with us: Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Batman Begins, the Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises, the Goonies, and To Kill a Mockingbird. So far, we’ve watched Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Goonies, and now Batman Begins. It was great; I especially love Rachel. I am a huge Marvel fan, but Wonder Woman and Batman Begins are the only DC movies I’ve seen and they’re both amazing.
9/23
We hang around the house all day. We watched the Broncos vs. Packers game (I can’t believe we’re 0-4) and the Rams vs. Browns. Mom and Jackson went into town to shop while Dad and I stayed at home to read and for me to do schoolwork. After dinner, we finished Batman Begins, which is one of the best superhero movies that I have ever seen. We had some banana split and cookies and milk ice cream from Patagonia Chocolates that Mom and Jackson had brought back.
Roy’s Peak: 9/24
The moment we’ve all been waiting for, hoping for, and possibly dreading: the awe-inspiring, intimidating Roy’s Peak Track. With 6.8 miles round-trip and a daunting 4000+ ft. elevation gain, we’d committed once we heard of it, but had been waiting for a good weather day. I hated it and loved it at the same time. The path never flattened out and wound back-and-forth across the front of the mountain, so it was very challenging, which I enjoyed. I had to limit my picture-taking on the way up, as the view was increasingly better as we kept climbing. It was very picturesque if a little smelly from all the sheep. You may have this image in your head of cute, white, and fluffy animals, but let me tell you: sheep are dirty and smelly animals. We’ve seen plenty of them while we’ve been in New Zealand, and though I have to admit that the lambs are really cute, the rest of them are kind of disgusting. We ate lunch at a lookout about forty-five minutes from the top viewpoint and then powered on up the last 1.5 kilometers. From the top, we could see all of Lake Wanaka, Mount Aspiring, Glendhu Bay, many other mountains, and even Lake Hawea in the distance. For those of you who know my dad, you can guess that he was a little nervous at the top, but he was very resilient and even allowed us to turn our back on the edge for some selfies. I know that going uphill is always seen as being hard and downhill as being easy, but I would much rather climb the mountain twice than have to go up it and then back down. Going down hurts everything in your legs: your knees, ankles, thighs, calves, hips, and everything in between. I probably sound like an old lady complaining about all of my aches and pains, but it was true. The day after Roy’s Peak, we were all a mess.
School and Recovery: 9/25
Most of the morning and afternoon was taken up by figuring out a new system of schoolwork now that we’ve lost access to Powerschool and all the time in between was spent lying in bed with our sore legs. Mom and Dad went out on date night and Jackson and I stayed in with Domino’s pizza. I know it doesn’t sound super great, but seeing how we’ve barely had an hour apart from each other, it was a relief to get away from two out of three (Still love you, Mom and Dad!!).
Final Day in Our Home
We walked into town for our last day in Wanaka. We walked into all the shops and got souvenirs and reminders of our amazing time here. We took our sweet time walking through the town we’d come to know and took the long, scenic way to the house, along the lakeshore. Back at the house, we packed our bags, I practiced flute, and we hung out. We had potato and sausage scramble for dinner and then got in bed relatively early so we wouldn’t be tired for a long day of traveling to Christchurch
“Home is truly where the heart is.”