Wanaka is a smaller, quieter version of Queenstown, about 45 minutes north. It is located on Lake Wanaka, another large beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. The main street runs along the lake, with a long row of restaurants and bars overlooking the beach and lake. There is a bit of the adventure tour thing in Wanaka, but probably at about 5% of Queenstown’s level. So it is much lower key, with lots of young people in bikinis sunning on the lakefront beach, and very few boats out and about. We stayed at “JuJu’s Cottage”, a newer cottage behind a family’s home. The owners were there but in 5 days, never came over to say hello or introduce themselves. A bit weird but the cottage was very nice.

JuJu’s Cottage.

A couple pictures of the town beach.  Main street is directly to my back.  I unfortunately did not get any pictures of the town.  🙁

The day after arriving, we drove about an hour north of Wanaka, much of it on dirt road, to hike up to Rob Roy’s Glacier. The hike was constantly up but not too steep and about 1 1/2 hours long. It was shaded and ran along a river, until we finally came to a large clearing and looked up at an amphitheater-like cliff with the glacier spread out on top. There were about 10 waterfalls coming down – one was about 1,000 feet tall and the water turned to mist by the time it finally dropped the whole way. It was an amazing view and we spent about an hour munching on lunch and looking for some of the glacier to calve off. We did actually get to see one big chunk come off and it sounded like a jet was flying overhead. Really amazing. There was a fairly steady stream of people coming up to see it but there were never more than about 10 people there at any point, so it wasn’t mobbed. But we were hardly alone.

We had just gotten started on the Rob Roy Track.

A view of the glacier from the track.

That 1,000 foot water fall Barb mentioned.  When the wind blew the water never made it to the ground it just became mist.

A close up of the Rob Roy glacier.

This is our view as we were eating our lunch.

A cute couple we met.  🙂

The next day we puttered around town and then went to the movies to see The Theory of Everything. Now this was a movie theater to remember. You needed to call them and reserve your tickets. Your reservation was scribbled into a book, which they checked upon your arrival. There were two theaters – the one we were in sat about 50 people. There were normal movie theater seats, but also a number of old couches as well as a dental chair. Apparently the other theater had a car you could sit in. They had a small café and if you wanted dinner at intermission, you placed your order when you picked up your tickets. They abruptly stop the movie midway, and if you ordered you could sit in the café and eat your lasagne. If you don’t finish, you’re invited to take your lasagna on a tray back to your seat. Or if you don’t want dinner, you can get one of their hot-out-of-the-oven cookies (which we sampled) or homemade ice cream to tide you over through the last half of the movie. After intermission, an employee comes in and asks if everybody is back in their seats, to see if they can restart the movie. Now talk about a quirky theater! It was great. As it was Valentine’s Day, we treated ourselves to a nice Italian dinner by the lake.

The next day, we hiked up Roy’s Peak, which is just a couple of miles outside of Wanaka, overlooking the lake and the town. Most of the hike is through sheep pasture, up a grassy farm track. But it is up – constantly. To the tune of about 4,200 feet of elevation gain. It was hot and dry and up, up, up. But once you got to the top, the views over the lake and the surrounding mountains made the effort worth it. We then replenished all the calories we burned by eating fish and chips at a bar overlooking the lake. Fish and chips seems to be the national food and is everywhere and the blue cod versions are often excellent. The next day we did more puttering and then loosened up our legs with a short hike around Diamond Lake. When we got back into town, they were putting up some really large tents on the town park grass. When we inquired about it, we found out there was an Ironman-like triathlon happening that weekend, and a few days later, when we stopped in town on our way through, we saw tons of people with tri bikes scoping out the route. All in all, we really liked Wanaka – more our speed than Queenstown but still big enough to have lots going on.

That’s where we are going.  The bump under the little cloud.  Man what a hot slug up!

The whole track was like this.  Completely exposed.

But the views from the top were magnificent!  They made the slug worth while.

The town of Wanaka from the top.  It’s a very cute town.