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Our journey down to Lake Mahinapua was a fairly short one and involved no little walks or stop offs on the way. We did however have to pick up some fancy dress bits in Greymouth before we left, ready for the nights entertainment at Lake Mahinapua or the 'Poo Pub' as it is known, because the way Mahinapua is said ('Mahina-poo-a') and not for any other reason.
The standard weather had graced us again and it was early evening by the time we had arrived at our stop. Now we thought Waitomo was small, but this place managed to trump it. Simply because the place you stay is not even a town, its a small, old, 'hotel' (their words not ours) in the middle of no where, just off the side of a long, straight main road.
It is run by an old boy called Les, who had been running the place for years (probably since it first opened) and when we first arrived he gave us a little introduction to the place. He was a bit of a hero actually and had a pretty dry sence of humor.
The plan for th evening was a steak dinner, cooked by Les himself and then a fancy dress night in the onsite pub. Not that anyone else would drink there due to the location of it. The Kiwi bus were the only people there. Before all the shinnanigan's took place in the evening we had some spare time to go and have a look round. First we headed down to the beach, complete with volcanic black sand. The sea and swell was pretty rough to say the least and after both firmly stating "you wouldn't get me in that", we headed towards, I guess what you would call the main attraction, Lake Mahinapua. Now as I have already said the weather wasn't the best and therefore the appeal and beauty of the lake no doubt suffered, as it was pretty uninspiring. Now on a lovley clear day, no doubt it would be beautiful, but not today. Now, it is by no means the worse place we have been to or seen, but a bit of sun would have made all the difference. Non the less, we are both glad we saw it, we couldn't come to Lake Mahinapua and not check out the lake, it would be like making a cake and not licking the spoon.
While we were exploring Les had been cooking up a storm and once back we headed for dinner, Steak, potato's, salad, corn on the cob, rolls and pasta salad (I think thats all of it), blinding. After coming close to bursting from food, it was time to don our chosen costumes and head to the pub. Belle went for a bunny and I went for the incredible hulk. A strange mix, I know, but we had all of five minutes to decide what to 'go as' in Greymouth (in a $2 shop), having to decide and purchase our goods or the bus would leave without us, I think we did pretty well (although you can be the judge from the pictures).
We spent the night having a few drinks and chatting to a Mexican, batman, cat woman, a leopard and fair few drag queens to name a few. We met a 'sausage' lad/ woman for the evening (it was suprising how many cross dressers there were) who had one too many one night out in Leeds and had 'Leeds Baby' tatto'd down the side of his torso, which amused Belle no end! It was a fun night and we called it a night in time so we didn't have sore heads in the morning.
The next morning our plan had worked and we up early and ready to go. We had a good night at the 'poo pub', we could have hoped for slightly better weather to view the Lake, but it could have been worse, it could have rained. The steak was good, the pub was fun and most importantly for coach travelling, we didn't have a hangover.
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