Wanaka was my favourite place in New Zealand. I’m pretty sure it was anyway, though a lot of other places are damn close. (I can make this pronouncement because I’ve now worked my way over to Australia. Hopefully my posts catch up soon.) There was no one thing about Wanaka that made it so great – no glowworms, no geysers, no gimmicks. Wanaka is a little town nestled in the mountains, on the shore of a brilliant, crystal clear lake – tourists haven’t really taken it over yet and it has a very friendly, small town vibe. We only stopped here because our guide at Fox told us we should really check it out. Our initial plan was to drop by for a coffee before heading to Queenstown for the afternoon. We stayed the whole day, and easily could have stayed for many more.

Stumbling upon a farmers’ market was the first sign we were onto something good, though there ended up being no food for sale, just arts and crafts. A latte and a pie at a local cafe got us warmed up though (well kinda – Ashley and I both bought sweaters here), and we thought we’d just wander along the beach for a little bit before heading on.

As an aside, I have it written in my notes that the bathroom in Wanaka is especially nice. That seems like a detail that should be edited out as I write this, but it provides a telling glimpse into what it’s like to live out of a van. Clearly the nice bathroom was an important enough find for me to scribble it down. Anyways…

A little bit of wandering became an entire afternoon by the lake. The beach curves away from the town into a regenerated forest area, and a few minutes outside town you really get the impression that you’re at the base of the mountains. Snow capped peaks, a mirror of a lake – I didn’t think it could get better. Then I realized that the stones littering the beach were perfect little disks. and I skipped them until my arm felt like rubber.

No day in NZ would be complete without some sort of strenuous activity, and the summit of the relatively small Mt Iron became our goal for sunset. Half the mountain is private land used for sheep farming, and the trail up the mountain followed the dividing barbed wire fence. This is only important because some local artist had spent untold hours attaching rosebuds (the mountain was covered in spent roses) to every single barb. The effect was pretty neat, but mostly I just admire the perserverence it would take to stick a rosebud every 6 inches for many kilometers. There was a nice panoramic view from the top that made me appreciate Wanaka that much more – snow capped peaks filled the entire 360 degrees.

The next day brought us to Queenstown, the one place in NZ that every Kiwi I met in SE Asia told me I had to go. After Wanaka, it was kind of a disappointment. I guess Queenstown is billed just as I described Wanaka above, and it truly was quite nice, but it is a bigger, pricey, less intimate and much more touristy version. The “things to do” in Queenstown involve bungee jumps, skydives, and jetboating. I preferred sitting in cafes and enjoying a quiet lake. Go ahead and call me lame.

I’ve also added a couple pictures of our “roadside” campsites. I wish I took photos of all of them, because these aren’t even the best. It was only near the end of the trip that I realized I should make some sort of record.