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4th Feb 2011 - Getting to Twizel

the bridge over the river ohau just before reaching twizel from the south

From Otematata Camp Site through to Lakeside Holiday Park just outside Twizel - with various detours including a visit to the huge dam near Otemata and a trip to shop into Twizel. About 70kms or 44 miles. This took ages because Guy's patched inner tube kept re-opening. I think it re-opened about six times though we gave up re-doing it and simply tried to reinflate it and do some more miles.The visit to the visitor centre at the huge 500MW (max generating capacity) dam was interesting - apparently they are upgrading to Thyristors for the AC to DC rectification (?) after managing for 45 years with the technology of the 60s.The centre had lots of hands on kiddies things that I enjoyed playing with - making water shoot through tubes and turn wheels. The man running the centre was from Hull and told us about his migration on somekind of scheme in 1965. This seems a scheme that might be useful for the overcrowded UK today. It worked for him. He still had a notable Hull accent - not much kiwi. Oddly enough he didn't come to Otematata initially tho' his pal of those days did. He only started work here after working for a power company on North Island.The power has traditionally sent via DC cable to North Island. This is changing apparently. This dam, though the biggest earth dam in the southern hemisphere is now second biggest dam on South Island (less than a concrete one at a lake in Fjiordland) and obviously China is building dams that will make it look like a toy.Then we went back to Otematata where we met Mike outside the 'On the Spot Shop' he is just starting a four month tour of NZ and had done the unpleasant slog out of Christchurch. He'd found it pretty unpleasant. But he's now got much nicer routes ahead of him. His blog is at nzbike11.blogspot.comroadside near omerama Then we headed up to Omarama, but with a couple of tube problems before we got there so we were running pretty late. I took the roadside photo to the left when waiting for Guy to fix his latest puncture. Then we headed up to Twizel, catchng a glimpse of a huge mountain as we arrived (Mt Cook is our best guess) where we shopped - once again delayed by more tube problems on Guy's bike. We had fish and chips with a rather good beer from Hokitika called....Then, after a very quick dip in a chalky lagoon of the lake (cool but delicious in the current hot weather - it's been a hot and baking day).While I type this there's a silly discussion about whether the Kiwi is too wimpish (small flightless timid bird). A man with a pigtail and muscles thought so and wanted something more powerful and intelligent. Hmmmm. I think the kiwi is an excellent symbol - it's great for an eco-friendly non-nuclear small nation. We can leave bombast and doomsday weapons to the US and China and hope that the world doesn't end too soon, tho' the good old wikileaks has revealed that China and the USA have been at a higher level of military antagonism than we knew. Julian Assange for the nobel peace prize!

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