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New Years Eve, lots of people had asked me where I was going to be for New Years Eve, I hadn’t known. It turned out to be Wanaka, the backpackers - the Purple Cow - was nice I had met some nice new people who would also be there for the evening. Chatting after breakfast with Clare, Phil, Laura and Tripp (all English except the American Tripp) we all decided to head off to Stuart Lawson’s Puzzling World. Puzzling World features the leaning tower of Wanaka, the room full of following faces and a three-dimensional maze, plus lots of holograms and other curious things.

After wandering around the curious and puzzling section of puzzling world we decided to tackle the maze. The maze is made from large 7ft fence panels, a couple of bridges and four towers. To complete the maze the four towers have to be visited and the exit found. Average finishing time 30mins to one hour. We split into the ever-popular girls vs. boys teams and started out on racing each other to the finish. The superior spatial awareness and cool heads of us guys saw us to a blinding start, reaching three of the four towers in the same time it took the girls to find one. We saw them standing in the blue corner tower as we headed off to find the final tower. The final tower was conquered with much jubilation, the girls now claimed to have found three towers. Three! How could that have happened? All we had to do was get to the exit and we would have won, but three towers put us under a lot of pressure. This is where we got into trouble. The maze had changed, someone had moved the walls, we were in the furthest corner from the exit and we kept going round in circles, we made it to the bridge, the girls had found four towers and were heading out through the emergency exit. Cheats. We caught them red handed, so they headed back in. A couple more minutes and we saw the girls just in time to watch them head out of the real exit and mock us. At this point it was too much, the humiliation, the disagreement in the ranks, we split up, every man for himself and started running. Panic stations. Level heads were out of the window, and loops and loops and the same bit of maze kept being visited. Phil was slightly cooler and managed to get out first. I came across Tripp at the exit tapped him on the shoulder and came out in second to last place, Tripp was last (by a whisker). The maze had been so much fun, one of the best $6 I’ve spent.

Back to the hostel via the supermarket, 4 litres of fruit juice and soft drink, 3 litres of cheap vodka, and one bottle of dry ginger ale - punch. Between the seven of us who wanted to be in on the evening’s foolery, $6 each.

I wished in the New Year about 12 hrs too early, the town had put on fireworks and bands, a party atmosphere was around the whole place. I had a great evening and wouldn’t have been anywhere else.

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