Come to Wanaka...to celebrate Hanukkah!

Sort of a nonsensical post title, but if you have ever heard "The Hanukkah Song" by Adam Sandler, you will understand why the Wanaka-ized version has been in my head EVER SINCE I ARRIVED HERE.

After I left Stewart Island, I was looking for a good place to chill out and re-socialize for a bit, and Wanaka has been fitting the bill quite nicely. It has a very laid-back attitude, and the surrounding lake and mountain scenery is beautiful. Yesterday I met an English woman named Annie, and we decided to hang out and spend the day together. We started out at the Stuart Landsborough Puzzling World, which is home to oodles of optical illusions, holograms, brain-teasers, and a famous, gigantic outdoor maze. The maze has four colored towers in each corner, and, ideally, you make your way through the maze and hit each tower in sequence. After breezing through the red, blue, and yellow towers, we suddenly found ourselves going in circles trying to find the green tower. (And yes, Stu, at several points I thought to myself, "you have now found yourself...trapped in the incomprehensible maze"). I am sorry to say that since it was very hot out (and we were giant wusses), we decided to abandon the maze without ever reaching the green tower. Damn you, green tower...damn you to HELL!!!

Being thoroughly parched from our a-maze-ing (HA!) experience, we decided to stop by Slainte, a local Irish pub for a beer. Well, somehow this turned into a drinking spree that would last well into the evening. We sat out on the patio, sipping Speights and Guinness, just relaxing and enjoying the weather and the conversation. Later that night we went to a seafood restaurant for dinner...it was so nice to have a quality meal after so many days trapped in freeze-dried purgatory. Afterwards we went back to Slainte to keep our drinking momentum going, and were just in time to enjoy a nice little Irish folk band that was playing.

Today Annie and I met a German girl named Rena, and we were all planning on buying tickets to a Black Seeds (a NZ reggae band) show tonight, but they were sold out! Maybe we will hit the posh Cinema Paradiso for a movie instead. I am pretty sure that this will be my last night in Wanaka for the moment, and that I will probably start a new walk sometime tomorrow, although I really have no idea where I feel like hiking. I suppose I will sort it out eventually.

To conclude this post, I figured it would only be fitting to offer the last verse of The Hanukkah Song (Wanaka-ized, of course):

"So drink your gin and tonica, smoke your marijuanika, and if you really really wannaka, have a happy happy happy time in Wanaka!"