Wanaka

In the late afternoon of Tuesday March 8th, we drove through mountainous regions and past gorgeous bodies of water until we hit a road sign - if we turned left, we'd head to Queenstown; right, to Wanaka. We were tired from all of our stops that day, and thought it might be smarter to stay in Queenstown that night (we'd be heading there the next day anyway) but something persisted in us, and we drove to Wanaka. I am thrilled that we did - Wanaka is easily one of the highlights of our trip.

 

Everyone who's been there says that Wanaka is the smaller but better version of Queenstown. I don't really think the two cities are similar at all, but either way, Wanaka takes the cake. As we drove into the town, the sun was beginning to set and the mountains, the lake, the sky were all being accentuated by the light. We giddily ran from the car down to the lake and jumped in; it was freezing but we all had huge smiles on our faces. Considering we'd been camping for the whole trip, we'd become pretty grungy so it was nice to get some water through our hair (which was looking similar to the way it did back in Rotorua on the North Island).

As we basked in the last of the day's sun, we made the decision to spend the night in beds. We had a number of options to choose from (considering our budget) which included a couple of hostels and motels, but Derek and I found one that blew them all away - the Durry Hill Motel. We chatted with an elderly man about staying at his motel, and he kindly showed us where we'd spend the night - we were shocked (in a good way!). We had a full kitchen, dining room, living room, two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a garage and a backyard. It cost $40 each for the night, so we went for it! I thought back to the days on family camping trips when Mum and Dad would tell us that we were staying in a hotel that night - John, Jane and I would go CRAZY with excitement! I seem to recall a cartoon of someone running blindly into a tree with happiness ... 

Sparing no expense at this point, we ate dinner out at Thai Siam - you guessed it - a Thai restaurant! Yum yum yum. We bought ice cream, popcorn and candy and watched a terrible Nicolas Cage movie in our fabulously comfy living room, showered, and collapsed into the most comfortable beds we'd slept in in forever.

The next morning we made massive breakfasts of pancakes, strawberries and scrambled eggs. The ever-wonderful William Durry chatted with us about how he'd built all of the houses in the motel complex, and directed us to fill up our water bottles down the hill with natural spring water he'd made available to the public. We spent the morning exploring Wanaka and taking it easy before we hopped back in the car to head to our next destination: Queenstown.