Wanaka

The drive to Wanaka involved some rather windy roads through an area called the Haast Pass. It was a 4 hour drive with very few petrol stations and lots of hills and curves. We did stop at a small little walk along the road called the Blue Pools. It was pretty and a good way to stretch our legs.

I was glad when we finally reached Wanaka, as it was sunny and beautiful as we drove along the lakes leading to the town. 

We decided to make a stop at the much publicized Puzzle World just out of town. We had encountered another place called Puzzle World in Taupo, but it looked really cheesy and dumb. This one was actually pretty decent. They have a leaning clock tower that goes backwards, with many fun photo opportunities. 

The first thing we did when we got there was the Great Maze. It's a life-size maze that goes around the main building. There were 4 different colored towers in four different corners. The task was to make it to each color tower and then find the exit. There was a bridge and staircases, and it wasn't as easy as it sounds. We managed to complete the thing in about 30-45 minutes, although some people can take longer than an hour. It was quite fun, I must say.

This was the cool entrance to the bathrooms with the entrance in Roman style and a cool painting on the wall

Then we ventured inside where they had a room full of puzzles and mind games and that kind of stuff. We tried a few of those before heading into the main part of the park--their illusion wing. There was lots of cool stuff to explore there: holograms, a wall of moving faces ( a room full of floor to ceiling concave famous faces that seemed to follow you when you walked back and fourth), a  slanted room that had really cool effects that made it look like a ball or water went uphill on its own, and a cool room called the Ames Illusion. They used it in Lord of the Rings--particularly to enunciate the height difference between Hobbits and Giants/people. It's really cool how it works and we got it on film to show the effect. 

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon before checking into our hostel that was in a great location, about 5 minutes walk from downtown, with great views over the lake and mountains. It was a nice hostel, with a great lounge room with big windows (and plenty of games), a nice, big, and clean kitchen, and warm dorm rooms (and ours had its own bathroom!) It also had a great view over Lake Wanaka.

Our first day we mostly lounged around but took an afternoon walk to a near by hill called Mt. Iron (not really a mountain, though). It was a nice short walk up a hill and the views from the top were great--you could look out all over Wanaka. There was an American high school group on the track with us--they left before us but we beat most of them to the top. Once up there, one of the girls was complaining about how having to do such a walk (30 to 45 min) was "torture" and that she had "never sweated that much in [her] life" . . . sigh. We decided to head back down before the entirety of the group got up there. 

We were lucky to get such great weather while we were in Wanaka--you wouldn't know it was winter as there was NO snow (except for on the mountain tops) and the sun made the weather quite mild. When we passed the Treble Cone ski field the next day, the entire mountain was bare--they hadn't even laid down a base yet with their own snow because it wasn't cold enough. 

The second day we made our way a bit out of town to go on the Rob Roy Glacier walk. On our way there, as we drove along the unpaved road, we encountered our first cattle crossing. We came upon a small herd of cattle that was blocking our path along the road. We didn't honk, as we didn't want to spook them and cause a stampede, but was just slowly rolled down the road until eventually they moved out of the way. I snapped a picture of the experience!

The Rob Roy track was posted as a 3-4 hour round trip, but it only took us the minimum three. It was quite a nice walk, though we were in the shade for most of the time as we were in a bit of a valley, and we were walking along a river so it could get quite chilly. But, it was still a relatively easy walk and we really enjoyed the views of the glacier at the end. It was smaller than the ones on the West Coast, but it was remote and we were the only ones there. It, too, used to be much larger than it is today.

We enjoyed our time in Wanaka, and the backpackers as well. In the kitchen they had a free food and free clothing basket for stuff that got left behind. We managed to nab some free food and I got some pretty nice free clothes: a zip-up fleece, boots, and women's small Columbia ski pants! It was a really good stop for us, though on the last night a random person came into the room around 12:30 a.m. when everyone was asleep and was not bothered to be quiet while settling in. The next morning he took a hot shower in the hallway without shutting the door properly and set off the fire alarm. The owners, as well as the guests, were none too pleased. 

When we left the next morning, a winter chill was very noticeable as there was frost on our car windshield--something that had yet to occur our whole time on the South Island. It turned out to be an overall chilly day as we made our way to Queenstown!