Hotel Whataroa – part two
Currently sitting in the airplane to Melbourne and trying to use the time times meaningfully – the seat neighbours do not make a particularly talkative impression 😉
I’ve already written about the parachute jump here. 🙂 It defo needs to be repeated! 😉 (why did the brochure of skydive.com.au just „accidentally“ fall into my hands just 10 minutes ago? 😇 At the Great Barrier Reef the jumps are even cheaper than at Franz Josef…😋)
Well – back to Hotel Whataroa… so it’s Friday, Day 2 at „Hotel“. After a short hike with Katrina in the middle of nowhere at Lake Wahapos I came back blessed from my parachute jump – and again I almost lost my glasses again 😀 I had parked them on the car roof of Katrina’s campervan before the hike started, when I creamed myself with sunscreen and mosquito repellent. After the first roughly 10 minutes of the hike I suddenly noticed that I can’t see so clearly…where were my glasses again?! 🙈
Anyway, we went on to Nirvana; the signage of the hiking trail was more of a vague idea than anything else…after about 1 1/2 hours we were back at the car again and see, the glasses were still in place – Katrina’s concerns that someone could „steal“ the glasses were therefore in vain. 😎
In New Zealand stealing is very uncommon…and in the specific case of my glasses: what does someone want with my pair of glasses? In case of need I would have some second pair of glasses anyway and even without glasses I can manage – except driving a car – quite well. Meanwhile I am sooooo old that my short-sightedness obviously develops slowly in the opposite direction…😇😰🧐
When we were back at the hotel early in the evening, we had „family offspring“ – Tuyen, a German (what else?! 😉 ) of Vietnamese descent from Munich was waiting for us… „You must be Tobi, right? How was the jump?“ Tuyen was „unfortunately“ (or luckily? 😉 ) involuntarily in the hotel, because her ancient campervan broke down near the Franz-Josef-Glacier and then she was towed to the workshop in Whataroa… seems those things happen more often, as it turned out later…
Anyway, we cooked together, ate and then played billiards until 3 or 4 again and enjoyed the cool jukebox…🙃😎
The original plan to leave the hotel after the second night dissolved at the latest when hotel mom Mads came around the corner the next morning with the hint that her brother Danny had a barbecue on the program in the evening – during the day, her 12 year old daughter, also called Madeleine (nickname ‚Maddy‘), would serve as our Whataroa tour guide. Maddy, who was rather shy at first, led us to the middle of nowhere of Whataroa, where there was a very nice little river – called Waitangitaona River – on the one hand and on the other hand a rather hidden short hiking track with a grandiose view of the glaciers. The little river was simply too attractive not to go for a swim there – Tuyen didn’t need to repeat her statement „If you jump in, I jump in, too“ 😛
Admittedly, the creek was quite cold, no idea how Maddy’s legs weren’t frozen after half an hour’s stay…after this nice refreshment we went back to the hotel where we met Victor and a second (!) Tobi.
Victor had just arrived at the hotel from Greymouth together with his dog Tobi 🙂 to deliver „new“ furniture and kitchen accessories for the hotel – a few days before Mads had placed an order that she didn’t know exactly what it would contain…🤣 She had been expecting „some good tables, some nice chairs and some parts from a professional kitchen“ – in the end she actually got approx. 15 sturdy, square, usable tables (for the bar/restaurant), extremely uncomfortable, worn out chairs covered in imitation leather 👀 as well as a motley collection of rancid, greased metal from which one is supposed to be able to put together a kitchen somehow…even Victor had to smile again and again when he enriched us with the stuff from the truck:
Victor: „Mads, you’ve got any idea or plan what you gonna do with THIS?“
Mads: „No idea. Not at all. I’ll figure something out…Tobi, Katrina, Tuyen – what do you think?“
None of the three of us found any words, I think our faces said everything…😅
This whole action was accompanied by a bachelor farewell! 😂 The boys obviously had fun watching us unload and as it seems to be appropriate in New Zealand, the prospective bridegroom made a fool of himself in the pink tutu 🤡🌺 – and carnival was just happening at the same time in Germany…
Afterwards we prepared a few things for the barbecue, which was supposed to start at about 8am…finally we were there at a quarter past 9am, because Mads had to do a thousand things, which she thought of spontaneously, fitting to her funky and un-targeted way…for example around 5am in the afternoon:
„Oh shit, I gotta clean our Airbnb house, my guests will arrive at 6pm! Could you maybe lend me a hand or two?! 😀
Of course, within the „family“ we support each other, as much as possible 😉 The Airbnb cottage was a real surprise for us (Katrina, Tuyen and me) – a totally sweetly prepared cottage, with a great wooden floor, beautifully furnished rooms and above all great windows; each window had a small ’skylight‘ of yellow and green stained glass at the top.
Should Mads even begin to implement this style in Hotel Whataroa, the hotel would become a real pearl…at this point, I almost wanted to conceil that the Airbnb cottage is less Mads work than that of her partner Ian. Unfortunately, he has just as little time as Mads to do something at the hotel…the next day he told me about a „crazy, neverending, silly project“ regarding the hotel. Mads herself answered my question what she was thinking when she bought this dump like this: „Well…that must’ve been totally related to the word mad in my name -> mad Mads“. 🙈😂
Back to the Airbnb: Katrina spent her time on the iron, Tuyen on the vacuum cleaner and Maddy and me made up the beds – while Mads did what she always does: running back and forth without any plan 😀 In between Mads asked me for a short taxi service to the hotel – my first experience with left-hand traffic AND manual gearshift – Mads Jeep, a good Suzuki was great to drive 😎.
And Maddy asked me to do a running contest around the house without telling me that you have to climb over a wall behind the house to get around the house – so in the first round I had no chance at all! 😰
Sometime after nine we trundled into the barbecue – with a rather sad occasion for Mads brother Danny, as we learned then…
To be continued.