The trip to Wanaka on New Year’s Day was fairly uneventful. We stopped off at Lake Matheson for a bit of photography, but we weren’t given enough time to do the full walk, which (as I learnt later) would have shown us a fairly amazing view. We also stopped over at Thunder Creek Falls.
Our driver informed us, on the way into the township of Wanaka, that we could feed the dolphins if we waded out into the lake. Remembering the Christmas lunch in Wellington, I was rather sceptical of this suggestion. We went down to the lake anyway to check out the scenery, but it was freezing. The hills and mountains around Wanaka are picturesque, but there’s a large ridge rising just to the west of the town, which must cut short the daylight throughout the year.
Entertainment for the evening for some of us consisted of watching a German dubbing of Drop Dead Fred, but only briefly before we were all fed up.
The following morning, on our way out of Wanaka to Queenstown, we stopped off at Puzzling World, which includes a museum of optical illusions and the Great Maze. We ran around the maze in the light rain like headless chickens. I did eventually manage to find all the corners of the maze, followed by the finish, which was the “standard challenge”.
