Whanganui Pics ... finally! [Part 1]

Now, I have been terribly remiss in getting these pictures online. I had a final last week, and then I was out of town Thursday-Sunday, so that is my excuse in not posting these pictures. I have so many, though, that they are going to come up in two posts! Way to stretch out my pictures ...

Our entrance into the Republic of Whangamomona. We definately hopped this sheep fence to get in close enough to the sign.

This is the infamous Country Pub where we stayed. Amy, Meredith, and I stayed in the attic room, which was pretty cool. We took our showers downstairs, though. Our shower came with instructions and warnings about the lack of hot water and water pressure, so we played it safe and took over the downstairs bathroom.

I showed you a picture of the Whangamomona Hotel; here is a picture of the rest of the town taken from the hotel. I told you there wasn't much to it! To be fair, there is one more building, a cafe of sorts, that is across the street from the hotel.

Upon entry into the Republic of Whangamomona, it is required that you make a stop at the Border Control. There is the one pictured above as well as the one at the other end of the street, about 500 metres away. This particular one is a bit rickity, so when you stepped in you thought the entire structure was going to tip over sideways!

Close to the end of our evening, a former mayor/president of Whagamomona presented the three of us with our black Whangamomona passports. We are also all drinking our Tuis on the house in celebration of the newly won awards. The people in the pub were so friendly to us!

After leaving Whagamomona Sunday morning, one of our first stops was up to Mt. Damper Falls. To get there, we had to hike through some farmland at the beginning of the trail, which is where we ran across these cows. I am not sure if they thought we had some kind of food or were just really interesting, but we had a bit of a stand-off with them before continuing on our merry way.

As tourists, we will do anything for pictures of more sheep, including climbing around on fences! But check out that New Zealand pure bush in the background ... it was amazing.

A very good example of the sheep of which we were so desperate to take pictures. Because it is spring, there are little lambs everywhere, so we were especially anxious to take pictures of the families. Our sheer number of sheep pictures was definately the runninig joke in the group.

A picture of (most of) the girls on the trip! Left to right: Ann, me, Amy, Kay, and Meredith. Taking the picture is Noel, and missing is Gillian. That's right, Noel spent all weekend in a van with six women! He survived in spectacular fashion.