Day 45 – Wanaka to Queenstown

9am bus out of Wanaka and as usual we always end up sitting at the back even though we’re never the last on the bus… I’m not quite sure how this ends up. We took a short drive down the road until we arrived at Puzzling world. It had its 40^th birthday last year and they say is one of the most photographed places in New Zealand. It had an illusion room, a maze and other silly things. The best bit was a room where when you look at it from one end the people on the left look massive in a small room and the people on the right are very small in a big room. It kind of makes no sense when you describe it but it was quite funny to look at.

Our next stop on the journey was at a fruit shop in the middle of nowhere, we were recommended to try the real fruit ice cream and oh my god, it was incredible! So good that I couldn’t finish it all as there was way too much. I went for fresh pineapple with vanilla ice cream.

Today was one of the shortest journeys on the south circuit as we arrived just outside Queenstown around midday. Our stop was at the AJ Hackett bungy jump centre as a couple of people were jumping off the Kawarau Bridge which is the oldest bungy jump in New Zealand and is 43metres high. The rest of us watched whilst Gary sorted out payment for everyone else’s bungys and swings. Kirsty and Francesca were 2 of the people jumping today so I was called in as cameraman. They said it was amazing but it still doesn’t really appeal to me… I’m doing a canyon swing instead though, so that’s pretty extreme.

After an hour or so we were ready to leave, meaning we only had 10 minutes or so left on our last bus together and with Gary because of this we had a group photo by the lake in Queenstown. It was kind of a pyramid but just laying on top of each other, it was quite funny, especially everyone trying to get back up again.

We are staying at Nomads and our room is quite nice. There are 6 of us in here but we have a balcony that we can actually use if we want to which is cool, because most balcony’s we’ve had you can’t walk out on.

We wondered around the town and grabbed some lunch in a nearby restaurant. We all thought the weather down here was going to be quite naff but it’s actually been warmer and nicer than the North Island.

Gary had organised us a bus night out so we all met in the Red Rock, then went onto Loco and from there we ended in The Find.

Day 44 – Franz Josef to Wanaka.

It was an early start for yet another long day of driving. We had to be on the bus for 7.30am so we had time for plenty of stops and whatnot along the way. Our first stop was at the beautiful Lake Matheson. Unfortunately the weather was a little cloudy so the views weren’t as reflective as they could have been but you could imagine how amazing it looked on a good day. We grabbed a cup of tea and a small breakfast from the café before making our way on one of the walks to see the lake, well to the first viewing platform anyway as it would take hours to walk the whole way around it.

Back on the bus we played another one of Gary’s little games. This time around it was the Weetabix challenge, this was to see who could eat a whole one in the quickest time without having a drink. I generally eat cereal dry anyway so I probably would have been quite good at it if I didn’t have a broken tooth on one side. We had a brief stop at Ship Creek to see if we could spot any dolphins but unfortunately we didn’t.

Next stop was Thunder Creek Falls, which is a 96-metre waterfall, located in the Mount Aspiring National Park. It’s amazing just to drive around this place and see so much beautiful scenery. 

We then had another brief picture stop in Lake Hawea lookout, the water was so blue but the winds were crazy!

After check in we actually had quite a few hours to check out what Wanaka had to offer. So Kirsty, Adam and I went on a little walk around the lake, dipped my feet in the water and just walked around the little town. All these places are just so beautiful. We went into New World as we had decided to make a group meal. Our obvious option was curry and we even treated ourselves to some garlic bread pitta things… they didn’t have any Naans, their naans looked like tortilla wraps which made no sense to us so we went for the next best and closest thing. Dinner was a success and we managed to cook the right amount and not have any left over.

We went down to the bar that evening as they had a game on called Bus Wars, this was because a Kiwi Experience bus and a Stray bus turned up that day so they play games against each other to see who is the better bus, obviously we were. We played Musical chairs, dance off and other things and Kiwi won them all! Terrible dancing and some karaoke then topped off the night.