2 out of 3 Goals Missed!

Monday 23 March

Otago turned on the sunshine again - autumn is the new summer!

Beautiful light and low ribbons of cloud over the lake as the sun rose. Lowburn Freedom Camp has a resident family of geese; they settle as a group all over the grounds and several times a day they fly over to the lake and swim around together before returning to land - this morning they were hanging out beside a couple of campers in the middle of the camp!

We had a chill morning then inflated the Razor Kayaks craft at around 10.30 (we’re getting so good at this now!) and dropped it in the lake just by Banjo. We set off with great gusto and plans to visit Pisa Moorings to our north, but then the map said it was about 5km away and we realised that we had an appointment with the laptop at 12 noon so that wasn't going to happen...

Instead we detoured under the road bridge into the inlet for a spot of exploration (and duck scaring apparently!) then decided to paddle straight across the eastern side of Lake Dunstan which was further away than we thought (again!). But that "conical hill" showed its true colours from here - it turned out to be the end of the long barrow type hill - left me wondering if it was natural or a vast bank created as Lake Dunstan was flooded.

Landed back by Banjo by 11.45 and promptly got ourselves logged in on 4 different devices for the Robbie Williams gig pre-sale! All went well, we both got in on his page and got tickets in the basket then could not remember our passwords!

So tried again on Frontier Touring and forgot our passwords for that too… but finally guessed right and got our GA tickets for his Ōtautahi Christchurch show in November 🎉🎉🎉

After all that excitement we needed lunch (chili & lime chicken tortillas) and a lie down - happy in the knowledge our Robbie tickets have been secured. Later I popped into town, did some laundry and bought some dodgy looking fresh fruit seconds from Webbs Orchards - which turned out to taste delicious, way better than the posh stuff at Jackson’s!

We went off for a late afternoon walk in search of the 45th Parallel Track but Louis worried that the evening wind would whip up, so we turned back, but then decided not to pull in Banjo’s awning after all, went for a freezing cold dip and ate dinner on the calmest of evenings! You can’t win ‘em all!!!