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Published: April 15th 2010
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There are two roads to Wanaka from Queenstown, and being as eager as we were to get to a ‘real’ campsite with showers and everything, we took the shortest route. This led us up a windy mountain road that boasted stunning views and razor sharp corners. Matt was driving so I was constantly on edge but eventually after a while we arrived in the very quaint Wanaka. I think that it helped that the sun was shining brightly but with the shops next to the shimmering Lake Wanaka and a backdrop of mountain ranges, the place really did look very inviting. We made our way to a ‘proper’ campsite, one that was just for campervans called Aspiring Motorhome (as Wanaka is in the Aspiring National Park, not because the campsite aspires to be anything more than it already is) and we had a bit of a spring clean of our little home, Bertha. Everything came out, everything was wiped down, and we tried to get rid of the strong smell that is in one of the storage areas below the bed that has been there since we first got the camper. No such luck. Anyway, as I said the weather was beautiful, we fed stale biscuits to the small birds that came hopping around Bertha and one cheeky little one was daring enough to hop up the step into the van. We showered, used their spa facilities - an indoor spa and sauna with huge glass windows overlooking the impressive mountains. Pretty cool hah? Matt cooked lamb burgers on the BBQ outside whilst I made mashed potatoes, broccoli, peas, carrots and gravy in the kitchen inside. Between us, we had made a very healthy and tasty meal. About time too! During our 20 hour stay at the campsite, I showered three times, four if you count showering before going into the spa as we don’t often get to shower whilst living in a campervan so I thought I would make the most of it. I loved the comment that Matt made to me after he had his ONE shower. He said “Before I got under the shower, I wondered what the stink was and then I realised that it was me.” It had only just dawned upon him obviously.
The main thing to do in Wanaka is visit this place on the outskirts of town called Puzzling World, a random
little place with a big ol’outdoor maze and a whole host of indoor eccentricities. We wondered around the four indoor rooms first ... a room with really cool 3-D holographic pictures on the wall, a room with 168 faces on the wall that followed you around the room
one of which was Mother Theresa - a bit freaky to see so many faces actually turning to look at you, one by one as you moved around the room; some mad tilted room where water seemed to flow upwards, and a crazy mess-with-your-head weird perspective room where you seem really little or really big depending which side of the room you’re standing on (the same technique that they used to make Jonathon Rhys-Davies seem really little in Lord Of The Rings despite him being probably the fattest and tallest cast member! Anyways after all of this and spending some time getting incredibly frustrated with some puzzle games, we headed into the maze ... the mission was to make it to all four corners, we both only made it to two corners before frustration crept in ... Cate nearly didn’t make it to the second corner even, after deciding it would be
fun to run off and head in a different direction to me ... not realising though that I was going the right way, she sped off in the wrong direction giggling to herself - until she saw that I was at the second corner of course.
Yeah I wasn’t very good at the maze, probably because Matt was chasing me around most of it so I didn’t have time to think about where I’d already been or maybe it’s because I’ve got a poor sense of direction. Matt on the other hand was particularly poor with those puzzles he was talking about whereas I was more methodical and patient and tried to work them out without getting frustrated like he did. I left Matt in the maze, leaving through one of the emergency exits as I needed to get to Bertha to get some tea-tree ointment for my poor feet that have been bitten to bits by horrid flies. So itchy! Matt joined me about 10 minutes later, having achieved nothing more than finding the two corners we had already found. What a waste of time - he obviously needed me there to help him out.
We left Wanaka, heading for Haast, not because we wanted to see the town but because it was a good midway point between Wanaka and Fox Glacier our next stop. We took a break along the way to see some ‘blue pools’, basically a glacial stream that is really blue in colour and clear...I tried to put my feet into it as my bites were really really itchy and I wanted to stop the itch! Not a great idea - it was quite painfully cold! Deciding to cook our beef schnitzel, mashed potato and salad before we arrived at the piece of land the DoC term ‘campsite’, we turned into a lookout point and started to prepare the dinner. Unfortunately, there was to be no cooked dinner for us that night as when we turned the stove on, there was absolutely no gas left and we were quite a distance from anywhere to get it from. Cheese/crisp sandwiches for lunch and dinner that day. Yummo.
Cate and Matt x
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