Day 140 - Wanaka

Wanaka is pretty sweet. As far as little snowboarding towns in the mountains go, its BEAUTIFUL. shockingly beautiful. On the drive there, we were passing a lake (not an uncomman thing to do in new zealand), but we stopped to take photos, and check these out...



The lake was amazing. It had a magic. We threw some stones in the water, and the ripples went on forever. perfect. still. amazing. we spent 20 minutes just staring at the reflections before reluctantly heading off towards the town of Wanaka, an hour further away on the same lake.



And Wanaka town is great too. It looks very european/alpine, and within 30 seconds of driving through town, eve and sam had spotted a handful of hot snowboarders drinking pints in the sunshine, so we parked up and ran towards the bar to join them. 6 pints, 1 subway and a purchase of a bottle of rum later, we were back in the hostel playing pictionary and laughing stupidly loudly.







The next day, anna and I decided to hire bikes and go for a ride around lake Wanaka. Its pretty expensive (a tenner for a day of riding - killer), but its healthy and fun, so we decided to do it. Anna had forgotten how to ride (it seems its NOT just like riding a bike), and watching her first ride was probably the most entertaining part of the day, but once she had got going, and I had been dragged away from a children’s play park (its not what you think, sickos), we began a 3 hour epic around the beautiful setting of Lake Wanaka. We skimmed stones, free-wheeled downhill and found a cute tree swing to play on. It was special.







That evening I spent 3 hours on the internet - that’s the thing about New Zealand, and by New Zealand I mean the ‘developed’ world. In south america, internet is cheap. And if its not cheap, its free. Most hostels have computers with free internet, and most connections are pretty good. But here! Here its always 2 QUID AN HOUR, and almost always its a slow connection. These people are here to MAKE MONEY, something which may account for south Americas relative economic state. Anyway, that aside, if you find a fast connection for less than 2quid, you’ve gotta take advantage of it. So 3 hours later, I had uploaded my glacier pics and was back to the hostel in time to catch some Uno with Anna and a viewing of the Blair Witch Project before bed.



In the morning, we checked out at 10 and started the 5 hour journey towards Milford Sound, stopping only briefly at Puzzle World, a theme park of puzzle and illusions which I was scarily very excited about. Too expensive to actually go into and explore, we checked out the tacky ‘leaning tower of Wanaka’ then got back on the road…