1/18 9:35pm, Wanaka Hotel
This probably ranks as the day with the least number of pics taken of all time for one of my adventure journals! With the 8am alarm, Wendy was happy to report that her foot felt much better. Still, she could only manage to hobble around the room. I made an egg, onion, tomato, cheese breakfast, and delivered her a hot plate to our room.
After some debate, we decided to stay in the hotel another day, so Wendy could keep off the foot in hopes of a speedier healing. We consider buying some crutches for $50 at a medical center, but figured we could put that towards the hotel room tonight, and just rest up. She'd re-sort all our belongings from our messy car (after I unload) in the room, and we'd order a 24 hour internet package for $10. Bummer, Netflix doesn't let you stream movies outside of the US… My plan was to also repack, and hike the 3 hour Rob Roy valley hike near town.
We divided up our massive store of dehydrated foods into smaller baggies, allocating for all our meals for the planned hikes. I ordered up LOTR, FOTR to play on the TV while we were packing. Meanwhile, the weather outside was gloomy. Light rain and lots of clouds. For lunch I made some salads in the room, and we had some left over salmon. I decided to pass on the Rob Roy hike, and focus on packing for future tramps. When FOTR ended, I ordered up The Two Towers, but they put on ROTK. We watched that and continued packing. Packing for long treks takes forever… Wendy's foot was feeling a little better, and her "hobbling" improved to a "gingerly limp". Time flew by, and at 8:30pm we drove to McGregor's Takeaway for some fish and chips and a burger. Wendy successfully ventured out of the room for the first time since 7pm yesterday. The weather is still cloudy and misty. Saw a couple rainbows in the evening. There were interesting layers of fog staggered up the mountains.
The room is completely flooded with bags and backpacks. Gonna take some work to load up the car again. Not sure about the plan for tomorrow. Likely to head someplace else though. Today served quite useful actually, since we needed a lot of work to organize for the upcoming tramps. Now just need to see how fast Wendy can heal before we can hit the trail. Weather is stellar for the next 6 days…