Travelling in the OFF season.

We found lots of advantages travelling at this time of the year. There was little need to pre - book anything. There were generally just enough people around to make it pleasant, but we had one really funny experience.

The photos here are of Lake Te Anau; we stayed 2 nights at a Hotel on this waterfront and one shot shows the lovely view from our window. It was a huge 2 storied building, with corridors 100 metres long.( R paced it out ) We were on the upper floor. We found out later that there were in fact 9 guests at the hotel ( somewhere ). We decided to have dinner in the hotel the first night. There we were the 2 of us in a dining room that could seat 200...just us and our young waiter James. Of course he was so bored he spent a good part of his time talking to us ( just for the company ).

We said " Do you know what this reminds us of ? "

"No, what ? " he replied.

"Did you ever happen to see a movie called The Shining?" we asked.

"Oh, yes I did," he said. "Ooh my."

"I have been watching for Danny on his tricycle, " I said.

The Shining was a Stanley Kubrick horror movie in the 1980s, based on a Stephen King book of the same name. It starred Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall and was set in a snow bound hotel in the Colorado mountains in winter. Their little son Danny cruised the long empty corridors on his tricycle. ( Nicholson of course was weird as only he can be )

For the rest of our stay we had a feeling of deja vu......I think young James did too. We ate out the 2nd night!