Lake Wanaka

Drive to Lake Wanaka
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As I indicated in my previous entry, we started the drive from Fox Glacier to Lake Wanaka and it was, by far, the most beautiful ride that I can remember while traveling through New Zealand. Of course, it did help that we had a perfect day and the lakes that we passed on the way were incredibly brilliant blue and sparkling. The road there wound through the mountains and we were driving on winding cliff-hugging roads, which added to the adventure for me as I was at the steering wheel. The car had it's first day of troubles when it hit the steeper portions of the road, slowing to a point where I was wondering if I should get out and push! Ha! No, seriously I was concerned but we made it without breaking down, whew!

Shoe sculpture at backpackers hostel
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The place we stayed was really nice and I couldn't believe the location, overlooking the lake from a hill. Wow. We decided to try and do a morning hike the next day before heading off through Queenstown on our way to Lake Manapouri. We checked out the local map on the bulletin board before setting off for Diamond Lake. The road followed the Lake Wanaka for a while and was paved and then we hit the portion that turned into a very bumpy gravel path that the little car was having a few problems with. After being on this for some time we decided that we must have missed our original destination and it wasn't until the road passed through a stream, which we didn't think would be wise to cross in our little car, that we turned around. Although I was concerned that the car was going to be shaken into tiny pieces I did enjoy the scenery on our way to getting lost. We were heading towards Mt. Aspiring, which has a very cool name, no? I think that had we crossed the stream we would have been close to the hike that goes to this mountain. Unfortunately we had to move on. Of course on our way back we passed the turn off for Diamond Lake, I'm not sure how we missed it, but that's life I guess!

More of drive to Lake Wanaka
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We headed on to Queenstown, adventure capital of New Zealand where you can skydive and bungy jump, or paraglide or whatever else your adrenaline starved body may desire. I had no desire to spend money on these activities and Linda wanted to sky dive in Taupo so we merely drove through to check out the city. It is really pretty but I'm glad we decided to stay in Wanaka instead because it was a bit touristy. So we headed off yet again for another fun afternoon of driving to our next destination.

View from hostel to Lake Wanaka
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Again, I wish that we would have stayed in Wanaka for much longer than a day. You could easily spend a week here and still be very sad to leave at that point.