The Moorings Wanaka

... hostel, a Swiss chalet style place with amazing views over Lake Wanaka and the surrounding mountains. An afternoon of domestic chores and relaxing followed - I needed to get all my sodden clothes in the wash and properly dried before that revolting damp smell became a permanent feature. Ben and I then rustled up the closest thing to a cottage pie (no dish to actually turn it into a pie) for dinner and watched Starsky and Hutch in the TV ...

We spent 3 nights in Wanaka. There wasn't a whole lot to do (besides Happy Hour) but it was nice just relaxing. One thing we did try was Puzzle World. It gave us some headaches but was pretty fun. The pictures can explain it better. :)

... Reading, very funny film, highly recommended!) Puzzleworld, is probably their biggest attraction, famous for its 2 tier maze and four illusion rooms. Well before we even attemped any of that we spent ages in the cafe trying to figure out different puzzles they had everywhere, could easilly spend a whole day there! So we head into the illusion rooms first, The room of follwing faces was great fun, you have to cover one ...

... bridge! Had a lovely lamb chop dinner in Makarora. It was karaoke in the bar, so me and Neil wowed the crowd with our rendition of "Summer Nights" from Grease, plus we had 3 backing singers (3 lads on our Stray bus). A bit later I sang "Reach" by S Club 7 with a British girl from our bus. I think my microphone was turned off because the bar didn't clear when I started to sing!!

... the Caribbean, which like New Zealand, had some boats...the tie-in was good enough for us; - Wanaka's Puzzling World - This was a great place! We sat for several hours trying to complete near-impossible mind bending puzzles, and then went into the holograph and illusion rooms. Our favourite illusions included the tilted room where balls appeared to roll upwards and the Ames room where people went from being huge to tiny in mere seconds. Okay ...

... swing bridge, and I mean that LITERALLY; it was swinging all over the place! <br><br><br><br>As you can imagine, Katie absolutely LOVED it. Erm.... ;) <br><br><br><br>The river roared and raged (and any other ...

... visual puzzles, tricks and illusions. <br><br> <br><br>It's key selling point is a giant maze which is spread over 2 levels, including bridges over the maze which should help but actually make it harder. This super maze challenges you to ...

Our holiday is already more than half over; but we refuse to be rushed, unlike lots of our fellow travellers who spend their four months zipping round NZ with a night here and a night there - makes us quite breathless.<br><br>The stay in the bach mentioned at the end of the previous journal was quite an experience. A bach is a Kiwi second home and they come in all styles, this one was on a little plot of land in Punakaiki less than 100m from the roaring Tasman, with a weka (fat flightless bird ...

... come down a very steep slope and so move fast and stay frozen to a low level among temperate rainforest. A little caution is required after the one hour walk to the glacier 'terminal' - as the temperature rises rocks start falling off, and the ice cave under the glacier collapses at intervals. We didn't do a glacier walk although Andy had a go at walking on the ice, for obvious reasons he didn't get very far!<br><br>On the long drive ...