Wanaka

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So we were in Wanaka from February 10-12th and had a fairly relaxing time. Wanaka is a gorgeous town because it's set in the valley next to a giant lake and it's surrounded by mountains.

We didn't do too much while we were there because we were recuperating from all of our activities in Franz Josef. The night we arrived we walked around the town and then had a group bbq with the people on our bus. It gave us a chance to say goodbye to that group since most of them were leaving Wanaka a day earlier than us. Later that night, when we were outside our hostel fighting with the vending machine, we heard a familiar phrase floating through the night air: "Saskatchewan? It's in the middle part of Canada..." So of course we ran inside and immediately asked the guy where he was from and he was from Regina. It was pretty neat to run into someone who actually knew where Saskatchewan was.

The next day, we decided that we were going to walk up Mount Iron to get some nice views of the town of Wanaka, Lake Wanaka, Lake Hawea and the surrounding valleys. This was one of the steepest walks up a hill we've done since the Tongariro Crossing in Taupo. Oh, and it was really hot because we were wearing about 4 layers each since it was cold in the town but it was a lot warmer on top of that hill. Anyways, we got some pretty nice pictures and I guess it was worth the climb. All in all, we figured we walked 10 km that day.

The following day (Feb 12th) before we left Wanaka we went to Puzzling World which is basically exactly what it sounds like. It's a building that's got rooms full of optical illusions, a maze, and those really frustrating puzzles (you know the ones where you have to detach the string from all of the twisty metal). We only did the puzzles though because we didn't feel like paying to do the rest of the things. Oh, and you can't forget the bathrooms - they had a tradtional roman style one and a more modern one and since a picture says a 1000 words, I'm just going to let you look at those instead of trying to describe them.

-Carole & Lindsay

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Photos

At the top of Mount Iron
That's Lake Wanaka in the background

King of the castle...
At the top of Mount Iron

We made it to the top!!!
At the top of Mount Iron

The leaning tower or Wanaka...
Puzzling World

The roman style bathroom
Lindsay very grudgingly let me take this picture. I was trying to get her to actually sit on one of the "toilets" but she wouldn't do it.