Fox Glacier, Wanaka and Lowburn - 7th Feb

We left the campsite relatively early heading south without much of a plan. After a couple of hours we stopped at a town called Haast and had a walk around the visitor centre, which gave some interesting information on the local area. While here we bumped into a couple that had done the glacier walk with us the previous day – they were a bit older than us and originally from Australia, now living in South Africa. We tried to walk down to the beach here but we were soon covered in sand flies – which give a worse bite than mosquitos – so we quickly moved on.

We got on the road again and headed over the Haast Pass – another beautiful drive in the sunshine with some amazing scenery over the Southern Alps. 

We did have to take it a bit easy as we didn’t have much fuel and the long steep hills were visibly draining the tank! We had several stops to enjoy the views and take some photos before we arrived in a small town called Makaroa where we eventually got some fuel! We were both a little worried running out of petroleum but all was ok! Gav also bought some Coke-Zero – he had been craving it so enjoyed it a lot – ice cold! Mmm!

A couple of hours later we arrived in Wanaka – a relatively large town on the coast of Lake Wanaka. We drove around the edge of the lake for a while before we arrived. The road reminded us of home how it snaked around the lakeside! When we were researching at home Gav spotted ‘Puzzling World’ which looked quite cool and good entertainment for a couple of hours so we headed there first. The first part of the experience was a large maze and you had to reach all 4 corner huts before finding the exit to the maze too. Amanda just wanted to run around to try and solve it but Gav remembered that if you always turn left, you end up covering it all and solving it, so that is what we did! It took us about 35 minutes (recommended up to an hour) so we were pretty chuffed with ourselves (i.e. Gav had a look of ‘told you so’ on his face haha! – why is he always right?!).

The other part of the attraction included several illusion rooms which you could wander around. One of them had hundreds of carved faces (concave but looked convex) whos eyes followed you when you walked around. Not just the eyes turned like a painting – the whole head turned. It was really creepy!

There was also a room which showed how they made hobbits look so small in Lord of The Rings, using camera angles and slanted roofs – that was cool! The final room was on a huge slant and had special exhibits to make you feel unsteady on your feet – and it worked! We didn’t stay in there long!

We drove 5 minutes down the road and parked up next to the lake front. As the sun was hot (+30⁰) the front of the lake was busy and there were a lot of people around. It was brilliant to sit and chill for an hour or so as we had spent most of the day in the hot van! We threw on our swim wear and headed in to the lake (so keen!). Once we got ankle deep we turned around and walked out again – it was ruddy freezing!!!

We thought about staying in the area but there was a few hours of sun left so we decided to see how close we could get to Queenstown, another 90 minutes further south. After about 45 minutes we reached a lakeside town called Lowburn and noticed a few campers parked up next to the lake, so we drove over and asked if it was free. Luckily for us it was! Here there was a boat launch ramp and some mooring pontoons, so to chill we headed to a pontoon and dangled our feet in the lake. It was very relaxing as the baking heat slowly disappeared. We slept really well.