Lake Mahinapua

Les, New Zealand's oldest publican at 83, stepped onto our coach. After berating our driver for not producing a mic fast enough he welcomed us to Lake Mahinapua, his pub and hostel.
The hostel is legendary on the Kiwi Experience circuit, it's been a stop for fourteen years and Les and his staff have catered for 3000 coaches. The inside of the no-nonsense pub is covered with Polaroid photo's of previous Kiwi passengers. Each group stopping usually has a meal and then it's over to the pub in fancy dress to "get to know one another", aka drink the bar dry.
Our driver, Darren asked us all to make costumes from plastic bags, I tried to contain my excitement.
I decided to make an Osama "BIN" Laden costume, from chocolate scented brown bin bags. Some people created pretty amazing costumes and I couldn't help feel they'd perhaps given the evening more thought than I.

I was trying to keep in character.

We had a meal in an extension off the pub, Les was in charge of meat. This included steaks and venison stew. Thankfully there was a vegetarian option. I particularly liked it when Les, trying to offload what was left of the venison, abruptly asked one girl "Do you want some venison?"
With a frightened look she replied, "Oh okay I'll try a little"
Les then covered everything on her plate with a huge dollop of venison stew.
For all my concerns about the evening, it was actually a good opportunity to get to know some more people. I've stopped off at a number of places en route, so keep changing buses and drivers. I remained with this gang for much of the West Coast and we are now all in Queenstown getting ready to go our separate ways.
Travelling around New Zealand isn't giving me much opportunity to get online and update here, so apologies for the lack of posts over the past few weeks.