Greetings ~
For those that noticed my brief disappearance, cheers very much 😄
My wife and I took a well deserved break down in Wanaka for a week. It was awesome. Kayaking 12 kilometres on a glass lake. Hiking, boating, shooting... the place is some kind of centre of “all outdoors things that are fun”. We relaxed, drank amazing local wine, visited vineyards... hell, we didn’t want to leave.
Walking by the lake in the evening and seeing the stars was also a high point for me. Where I grew up in the UK there was no such thing as going outside and seeing the entire Milky Way with your naked eye. I don’t just mean stars, I mean all those cloudy purple bits that look like art. I’ve never seen those with my own eyes before, only in pictures online... stunning.
So why am I thanking Airbnb? Well... a couple of reasons.
I suffer from a bit of anxiety and... the move to NZ hasn’t been easy in that regard. Hosting on Airbnb has given me confidence I didn’t have before, to venture out and do stuff, speak to people, and learn about parts of NZ (and even my own city) that I haven’t before.
Secondly, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to visit such an expensive part of the world before. A recent book I read described Wanaka as the place where aging millionaires live, waiting for the impending apocalypse and living under the mountains. I have to say... they’re on to something. The place feels like where you’d want to be if it all came to an end hahaha. For the simple reason that, the views are well worth being the last thing you see before it all gets flushed.
Thanks Airbnb, for making a positive difference in my life.
~ Ben