Today we are in a small town called Wanaka next to a lake of the same name. We came here to see if we could experience a true piece of Kiwi culture, a rock festival! Rippon is held every other year on a small winery outside of town. Tickets are limited to 5,000 and they were sold out months ago. There are two types of ticket. One is a 'day' ticket which gets you into the music all day and night, ending around 1:00 a.m. The 'combo' ticket gets you access to the 'after party' which is held on private land a short distance away and ends at 11:00 a.m. Sunday.

Our hopes were to find two day tickets and not pay exorbitant amounts for them. Everyone we spoke to just shook their heads and said 'good luck with that' rather sarcastically. We have been checking on 'Trade-Me' New Zealand's version of E-Bay, but tickets were selling in the $250 range each. Face value was $82 plus service charges.

We decided that the best way to get tickets was to come to Wanaka a day early and find someone here who had them and couldn't go. As a veteran of several hundred Grateful Dead shows, I am pretty confident that tickets will show up. Remember the Roots festival in Kaikoura that we didn't attend, but tickets did show up if we wanted them, and at face value.

We planned to make up a flyer and go around to cafes, Internet shops, backpackers, and any other locations we thought there might be notice boards where we could post them.

We made up the flyer and went into an internet shop to print it out. While there I quickly downloaded emails and then printed out the flyer. More about the emails later, I promise!

We headed out and put up half a dozen flyers when we went into a small cafe/organic food store. They had a bulletin board out front and we wanted to ask if it was OK to post the flyer on it. They told us they generally don't allow that, but then said that one of the people that worked there had two day tickets that they needed to sell!!!!!!! They said he would be in about an hour and a half later and we should come back then.

We left the store with our hearts racing. Could it really happen that easily? We went back and waited patiently until the time came to go back. When we arrived, the person we needed to meet was there, but he didn't have the tickets. Turns out they were actually someone else's. They rang him up on the phone and let Val talk to him. Turns out he was in a meeting and needed to call us back in 15 minutes. Val gave him our cell phone number and again, we waited. 45 minutes went by and still no call. Val decided to check the phone number written on the back of our cell phone with the one programmed into it (don't ask me why she thought of this, but I'm glad she did). Turns out we had given him the wrong number! Val went back into the cafe and told them what had happened. Sure enough when they called him, he had been trying to call us back. He did in fact still have two day tickets and wanted face value and the service charges only. Val made the purchase, and we are off to Rippon tomorrow.

The sweetest part of this was when Val was walking around taking down the flyers we had printed. A few places asked if we had given up. Val just smiled and said "no, don't need them anymore. Got our tickets."

Now, back to those emails. We have been researching and communicating with multiple hotels, hostels etc. in Munich regarding accommodations for Oktoberfest in September. We started this last September since we are hoping to have a group of friends meet us there. Early bookings are essential unless you want to pay huge amounts and be located miles from the festival. We had found one place that had small multi-bedroom apartments that were very affordable. Unfortunately, they did not take bookings until March 1. So we have been communicating with our friend Ken Kane at home who has agreed to help organize things from his end, including being the banker for this. Our job is to secure the room.

Val has been in touch with the place we are interested in a few times over the last two weeks to confirm prices, etc. and mentioned in her emails that we are traveling and asked if there was any way to get on a list so that when March 1, rolls around, we could get the booking ASAP. We got a response back that said the room we wanted was booked for the dates we were asking about. We were a bit confused. Did she mean they were being held for us, or had they already booked them, even though it wasn't March 1 yet? Val sent an email to get clarification, and yesterday we got the response back that the owner had decided to open bookings early and the room was already booked. However, they had 'just' had a cancellation that day and were holding the room for us!!!!!!! We need to get them a deposit by the 20th of February, but that's the easy part. Now we just need 2-3 more people to commit to coming and we have it full!

So, two great things in one day ... Rippon tickets at face value and cheap accommodations for Oktoberfest. As my friend Kerri Whitlow sometimes says, it's like your falling uphill. Everything just seems to be falling into place. Ahh, I love a good plan:)

In a couple of days, look for a report on Rippon. Til then, never give up on your dream.

Eric & Val