Life in Wanaka

Living in Wanaka is simple and relaxing. Our only concern is who to hang out with at night and where to park our van to sleep. We wake up everyday at sunrise, which is about 8:00 and head to the bathrooms at the lake to brush, wash and get ready for our day. Most days we head up to Cardrona for a few hours and then come back to town in the afternoon and hang around until its time to make dinner. Depending on the day, we sit at the beach, read, go to the grocery store, walk around town or organize the van. Almost every day groups of people come down off the mountain and meet at "Kai WhakaPai" a small cafe that serves food and local beer. We only go once in a while, but its nice to sit down and meet people over a glass of "brewski". When its time to call home, we head up to the internet cafe, which is above the "Kai" where it costs about $4 an hour to use the internet. Most nights we cook and eat dinner in our van parked at the lake. Despite only having a stove and not an oven or microwave, we make do and have even came up with some new dinner ideas to take back with us. One nice thing is that they have free electric bbqs to use by the lake so that gives us more options on what to eat and how to cook it. After dinner we bum around town some more or head over to a friends us to watch movies or just hang out. Some nights we go out to meet people at local bars and play pool and what not but its pretty expensive to go out so we try not to make a habit out of it. As for showering goes, every couple days we switch off between using friends bathrooms, going to the indoor pool in town or just wherever is convenient. We always try to repay people for their generosity by showing up with beers or snacks and it works out very well.