Had to wake up Samantha three times this morning. She may no longer be a teenager but her body doesn’t seem to have twigged just yet.
After our leisurely start it was midday by the time we drove up the mountain to the Turoa ski field. The weather report had said conditions were going to deteriorate up there over the course of the day with heavy downpours in the afternoon but that turned out to be rubbish. It was cloudy with a bit of drizzle when we were there but it got progressively nicer as the day wore on, which we could see as we did our various activities at lower levels.
We walked around up there for a while amongst the ski field ghost town before heading down the mountain. I really hope they get some better snow the next few seasons, the town needs all the help it can get.
We stopped to do an hour long walk to a waterfall half way down the mountain. I’d done the same track walking in thick snow in July a couple of years back, I’ll see if I can dig out some pictures for comparison.
After all that exertion it was time for a nap. We had to wait until school was over anyway to use their tennis courts to try out my new pickle ball set. We didn’t bother reading the instructions, all we wanted to do was try to get some rallies going. My bad ankle hampered me, and it’s been years since I’ve wielded a racquet but we didn’t do too badly. It’s a great way to get exercise, in fact it’s the exercise that prolongs your life the longest, for various reasons including the social side. This is according to The New York Times, who say you’ll get ten extra years out of it. A good sport to pick up on your death bed it seems. We played for an hour or so in the midsummer heat.
By then it was early evening, time for a quick shower and then head into town for dinner before everything shut. It’s a strange place, Ohakune. It’s a cross between any small hick town and a tiny replica of Queenstown. There are certainly no shortage of places to eat. We had lovely vegetarian pizza and pasta at an Italian place Samantha recommended from a previous trip. We ate far too much then went back home for some desultory jig saw puzzling before heading to bed.
