The Poo Pub
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2007
1
31
50
Trip End
Nov 11, 2007
Lake Mahanioua,
New Zealand
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Our second stop was at a place called Punakuki which is famous for pancakes rocks and blow holes (see the pictures!) it was pretty cool and luckily most of the rain had stopped and there was a groovy little cafe which served good coffee to warm you right back up!
Our overnight stay is in a place called Lake Mahanipua, another remote little location with only the backpackers that we were staying in a 700m walk to a beautiful lake and a deserted black sand beach
Cape Foulwind
. The Kiwi Drivers affectionately call the pub the poo pub just because of the name of the place and not for any other reason thankfully. The pub is run by a guy called Les who at 84 is New Zealand's oldest publican and still pretty spritely. He cooked all 30 of us a steak dinner (well he cooked the steaks and Flea did the rest) It was a cool place although the accommodation was pretty basic the showers were hot and I would imagine that he would have been closed a long time ago if it wasn't for the Kiwi Bus stopping there all the time and bringing him trade. In return its a pretty much anything goes place. You can't drink you're own alcohol in any of the hostels here if they have a bar - licensing laws are pretty strict in New Zealand and a licensed premises is not allowed to let any guests drink their own alcohol or they risk losing their licence. But Les and the two girls that work for him keep the bar open pretty much as late as everyone keeps drinking and the drinks were pretty reasonable.Flea asked for volunteers for the washing up and needless to say the posh crew didn't volunteer! Too posh to wash.......they were actually really bugging me but I guess its their issue and for them to deal with and hopefully I'll never see any of them again once I get to Queenstown on Sunday!
Anyway I walked down to the Lake with Asrin and although it was really beautiful I was gutted that it was raining because that meant that you couldn't see the mountains which are the back drop to this beautiful lake. Being here in the spring has its good points too even though there is quite a lot of rain - the buses aren't so busy, places aren't over run with visitors and there are lots of lambs and calves and baby animals in general floating around.
