After our windy ride, we stopped off for a windy lunch. There’s a small pass between two mountain ranges and you’re back along Lake Wanaka again. The Boundary Creek rest stop/camping spot we ate in had a little shelter, where we were somewhat protected from the wind, but not by much. Little waves were lapping up on the shore from the extremely choppy lake and we could see the snow being blown around the peaks, under the clouds. You could tell this was standard fare because of the shape of the trees in our little cove. Some of them reminded me of the cypress along the California coastline. I walked around the beach and a glade of trees…trying not to get blown into the lake. Wanted to be able to look back down to the end of the lake we started from, but you couldn’t see all the way down to town. There was some brush with pretty pink flowers on it. Walking back to the lunch spot through the glade, I found a little blue dome tent doing it’s best not to be blown over too, although the trees slowed the wind down a bit. There was a story posted there of the building of the highway through the Haast Pass. The road was built by 1965, but not fully paved, or “tarsealed” until 1995. The location was dedicated to Makarora Jack, who worked for his 90+ years getting it built. Must have been hard work.
While I was exploring, Karsten and Jenny were setting up lunch in a little covered area. Everyone was huddled ’round drinking something hot and trying to find shelter from the wind. By the time I got back, there was no hot water left…oh no! Lunch was a picnic setup, with us getting our first of the killer Karsten salads. It was a pasta salad with corn, sweet red capsicum (or pepper, as it is better known at home), pine nuts & sunflower seeds. Very tasty. There was lots of other stuff to choose from too – had a half a cheese, pesto and sun dried tomato sandwich. Skipped the mussels that day. There were meats for those who ate them, but I didn’t pay much attention. Since the hot drinks weren’t an option, I had my first tast of L&P, or Lemon and Paeroa. It was sort of a cross between 7Up and Ginger Ale, but slightly more perfumy in taste. Pretty good actually – except I really wanted something hot (as did everyone else). Every now and then, the sun would peek through the clouds and we’d all run out from under the shelter to bask a bit.
By this time, Karsten was trying to boil water in a huge covered pot over propane that was set up in a little grill that seemed made for sticking propane tanks in. Unfortunately, the water wasn’t going to boil before dinner time and we would have been icebergs floating in the lake by then. New Zealand already has its icebergs floating in for the first time in 75 years, so they didn’t need more … see Icebergs Become Tourist Mecca. Between that and the cheeky little birds trying to eat our remaining cookies, we decided it was time to take off and find a cafe that could make us coffee instead.