Wanaka

Thursday 29 December; Wanaka set in beautiful surroundings, with many adventure activities is regarded as a more restrained version of Queenstown. I'm going to really hate Queenstown then! The lake itself, in the shadow of Mt Aspiring and lessor surrounding mountains, is undoubtably beautiful. But it is pure tourist town. A nightmare to park anywhere, people everywhere, massive queues in New World and we thought we'd not have a one pot camp meal and have an Indian takeaway instead but it was an hours wait! So we have no photo's of Wanaka for you.

We stayed outside the town because most sites wouldn't have dogs, so we went 10 km out and stayed at the Luggate Cricket Club. There's plenty to see and do though. A trip to the western shore is where rugged country south of Rivendell was filmed for LoTR.


The Matukituki River feeds Lake Wanaka, and we went for a stroll and watched some jet boats doing their thing. Diesel almost got swept away by the current when we were playing stick, which though sphincter clenching was a good lesson for the kids to be wary.


The New Zealand Fighter Pilots Museum was a good visit, but the main highlight for us all was Puzzling World. The toilets were amazing...pass the sponge!

There are a number of indoor attractions; holograms, hall of following faces and the tilted room with a floor 15 degrees off horizontal, so water appears to flow uphill.

But the main attraction is the maze, which apparently sparked a brief maze-building boom in New Zealand and Japan in the 1980's. So while we were like some new romantic looking for the TV sound these guys were running round mazes, crazy huh?

.

..

...

50 minutes later....

Boyashaka!