Off roading

For our outing today we headed off into the hills to a village called Piodao. It's a small, remote village known for its schist houses and unusual church. It reminded us very much of houses, both old and new, found around Wanaka and Queenstown. It would appear that a fair amount of money has been pumped into it by the EU, and it's clear that they must subsidise road signs and the blue and white aluminium windows and doors , because they're everywhere. There's also a big, new, swanky hotel overlooking the village. We had a bit of a stroll around then went for J's birthday lunch..As usual her being vegetarian completely flumoxed the staff. After we established that there were no vegetarian meals, the waiter offered us mixed salad - sounded good. I had a traditional goat meal (the meal was traditional, not the goat) which was lovely if rather salty. J's vegetarian mixed salad came with 4 pieces of ham of course.

When we came to pay it turned out that neither our Maestro card or my Visa card was acceptable, 

and between us we couldn't scrape up enough to pay for the meal! We tried the swanky hotel but there seemed only to be a 

skeleton staff and he couldn't speak any 

English so there was no help there. We went back to the restaurant and the owner let us off the remainder. It was so embarrassing. I've got the address so will probably send the outstanding amount.

The drive out was... interesting. We were supposed to have 

followed a scenic ring route and in a way we did. Unfortunately a slip by the navigator meant we took a wrong turn. This was followed by a diversion that sent us up a dirt track. That dirt track 

put us on what I would guess was the old road to Piodao but which at any rate had not seen traffic other than forestry for some time. It was like Skippers Canyon, with huge drops on one side to the valley (and the correct road) below. I had to drive for what seemed like hours to get back to civilisation or at least a decent road. I'm afraid our Navman couldn't help in those conditions. It even gave up telling us it was "recalculating".