The Poo Pub, Lake Mahinapua

Today we headed down to a place called Lake Mahinapua to a hostel/bar known as 'The Poo Pub' down to the fact not many people can't pronoun Mahinapua correctly. The oldest landlord in New Zealand , Les aged 84 would be our host and we heard he was a quite a character.

There were quite a few interesting stopping points on route the first, a walking track lead us to a seal colony (yes, there do seem to be quite a few seal colonies in New Zealand) it was a pretty easy going walk taking us along the cliffs where we would meet the coach at the other side. There were plenty of seals and we took this opportunity to take some more pictures as it wasn't raining yet. Our next stop off was to look at a cove which we were told not to swim in, not that we ever would cause it would be freezing cold. This was a short walk and we could see right away why you wouldn't want to swim here the tide was very strong and a guy got soaked by the tide due to his curious nature. Another stop off was at the Pancake Rocks so named because the rocks have been eroded away over the years to resemble stacked Pancakes. Watching the sea crashing against the rocks it looked pretty deadly.

Tonight was an organised fancy dress party that was arranged by KiwiExperience, giving us a good chance to make fools out of ourselves. We were informed the theme was based on the first letter of you first name which actually wasn't a bad idea I thought, Ollie thought differently as I listed all the options that initial came to mind and all he could think of was otter or ostrich. It would prove O isn't the best for figuring out what to dress as. We stopped off at a place called Greymouth to purchase items for our fancy dress with a cheap Poundland type store and a stored called Warehouse that was a little bit like Macro selling a wide range of products. I had a few different ideas but I really want to incorporate the hat I bought in Australia thus going as “Billy the Kid” was the option I finally chose although I was nearly tempted into buying a Buzz Lightyear mask and top for $20 in the end I decided that if I didn't win a prize it wasn't really worth it. Ollie struggled for ideas and we both had a think about what he could be and eventually he came to the decision of an Olympic champion, yes this is the best he could do with limited time.

When we reached the Poo pub it started to rain pretty hard and it seems like this might be set in for the rest of day so we didn't leave the hostel to go visit the lake which was about 1 km away.

The evening itself started with Les cooking us a steak, and venison stew which we had along with some pasta, salad, potato and a bread roll, it was a good feed. After we got into our costumes and headed over to the bar for the drinking to begin. The range and quality of costume were pretty good considering we had an hour and a half to find and buy the costume and no-one was going to spend a lot of money doing it, the notable ones were our room mates Dave and Brad who were a dog and a bat, Jimmy the jellyfish who won 1st prize, and Tucky who went as Tinkerbell. Everyone had a good night and we finally were kicked out at about 1am, probably wise given we had to be up at about 9am the next morning.