Wanaka is a small town that sits on the lake of the same name, on the edge of the Mount Aspiring National Park. Being on the "wrong" side of the Southern Alps makes Wanaka a very pleasant place - the mountains hang on to all the moisture blowing in from the Tasman Sea, leaving this lakeside town basking in sunshine and warm temperatures.
Though Wanaka really comes into its own in the winter, there's plenty to do in the sunshine. Our first port of call was the Waterfall Creek walkway, though due to the dry weather the waterfall was more of a trickle. This two hour walk takes you along the lakefront past vineyards and kanuka forest to the foot of Mt Roy, a hard 8 hour climb that we shied away from.
Instead of the taxing Mt Roy ascent we opted for the more realistic climb up Mt Iron that provides rewarding 360 degree views of the immediate surroundings. At the foot of Mt Iron lies Puzzling World, an intriguing tourist attraction - the first in the area - home to the world's first "modern style maze", meaning its made of wood rather than hedgerows.
The maze has a total of 1.5km of walkways, but generally you will walk between 3 and 5km in your quest to reach the four corners and make your way back out. Target time is 30 minutes to an hour, and they're not joking when they say it takes long! Finding the corners is the easy bit, its making your way back to the start/finish line from the farthest corner that really does your nut in. More than once we were close to reaching for the emergency exits after finding ourselves to be in exactly the same position as five minutes previously!
Once you have completed the maze you then head into the puzzling rooms - four separate areas, each with its own magical attributes. The first is a hall of holograms, laser produced 3-D images that change depending on the angle at which you view them. Being in this room brought back childhood memories of my first encounter with holograms at the Science Museum in London when I was about 5 years old. Next in line is the hall of faces - 168 famous faces that follow you around the room, Mona Lisa style.
The third room is the Ames forced perspective room, where you get to play a Hobbit. The room is built with whacky proportions in a similar manner to the sets used in Lord of the Rings, so that the people standing at one end of the room are way too big, whereas their counterparts at the other end look tiny.
Saving the best room for last, you enter the tilted house. This room is not for the easily nauseated, everything is tilted at 15 degreees so that water flows uphill, you ride a slide upwards and manage to tilt forward to impossible angles!
A must do in Wanaka is the Cinema Paradiso, it will blow away your idea of a cinema forever. Situated in the old town hall, the Paradiso has one projection room where patrons sit on a mismatched collection of sofas, pouffes, seats from a Chinese airplane, and an old Morris Minor. If the screening proves particularly popular there are cushions for you to sit on the floor. It feels more like being at a friend's house than being in a cinema and makes for an intimate experience.
That's it for the Wanaka update - next stop is Lake Tekapo in the Mackenzie Basin.
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