November 16, Wanaka to Haast

How to boil eggs when your room only has a microwave and a hot pot

In 2008 we never made it to the wet, er, I mean West coast. This time Cynthia has made it compulsory (good kiwi word). Being the fan that I am of crowds I insisted that we do this "backwards". That is to say that there seems to be a natural order to things that I will oppose. The problem with the west coast is that it is one giant funnel with only 3 escape routes. The strip of land between the coast and the southern alps is pretty narrow, with only one road running north-south, and I think that the coast is the motorhome capital of New Zealand.

Going back to the order of things. See, typically, the average arrogant member of the Aryan Master Race picks up his motorhome in Auckland and meanders down the North Island with secret dreams of the South Island. Once across the ferry from Wellington, the horde typically will turn west, skirting Marlborough Sound, through Nelson and onward to the west coast at Westport. From there it's south along the coast. Have you ever gone to a fish hatchery with the big round tanks? Remember how all the fish swim in a big circle all in the same direction? That's the motorhome paradigm. So I'm going backwards. The quickest way to the west coast from Wanaka is over the mountains to Haast on the coast, so guess what...

Heading out of Wanaka Cynthia needed to go to Puzzling World.

45 minutes, baby!
It took us as long to find the exit from the yellow corner than it did to run the rest of the maze

Roman toilets

When I say she's lopsided... not really what I mean.

Lake Hawea

The Blue Pools on the Makarora river

After a few obligatory stops we made it to Haast township. Not much of a going concern. Haast is the self-proclaimed Whitebait Capitol of the world (click here for whitebait info). The season had just ended the weekend before and the town and its environs lost most of its population.

Anyway, when you pull in there's an info kiosk, a couple motels, a grocery store, blah, blah. We decided to go in search of the afternoon TipTop fix and noticed that the grocery also doubled for a cafe and TipTop dispensary. We went in and this incredibly dour looking forties-something woman was manning the cafe counter. I noticed that they had something called a "whitebait sammy" on the board of fare so naively asked what it was. She looked at me like I had two heads and said "whitebait between two pieces of bread". I couldn't resist. "Oh, I get it, sammy is short for sandwich. Shouldn't that then really be whitebait sanny?" No reaction. On to the TipTop.

They had the ice cream case there but none of the flavors were labeled. I asked what they were, and in the exasperated tones of a professional 13 year old she fires off the flavors like she's reciting the names of the seven dwarfs. On our way out of town we noticed (and I'm not kidding here) the reader board with the name of the cafe: