Journey to Wanaka

I am home safe and sound and cannot wait to share my last half of my holiday with you! So as you probably can tell I am a bit behind but I plan on catching all you up by the end of the week!!

Sunday: We left Franz Josef and headed to Wanaka! On the way we stopped at some pretty beautiful lakes. The first lake we stopped at was Lake Matheson – this lake is called mirror like because it has these interesting minerals that help reflect the mountains (Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman) and it creates stunning views.

With our luck it was raining therefore clouds – no mirror for us. But we did go on a hour walk around the lake to spend some time outdoors. It wasn't our favorite walk - we were kind of over walking in the rain and not seeing the "stunning views."

me not too happy :( 

What the lake should look like.. 

Next stop – Knights Point. This part of the coast has some interesting history I don’t remember much about but it was pretty! Again – it was pouring so we didn’t get to see much of the coast line.

Even though it has been raining those have been some of the most memorable J

So another one of my favorite stops on this crazy trip was at Thunder Creek. We drove through Mount Aspiring National Park and it was an amazing drive (Lots of the LOTR movie scenes were shot here). Since it has been raining like crazy all the mountains had tons of waterfalls along the side. 

view outside the bus window

It was such a beautiful drive spotting all the random waterfalls we could find. We pulled over at Thunder Creek waterfall. It is a 75 meter high waterfall and it was so cool to go down to the water and see it.  

We then drove around Lake Hawea and stopped a couple times. This lake is awesome (and it stopped raining) with all the majestic mountain around it makes it a great sight to see. Driving through Haast Pass was really fun with the lake a mountains on either side.

Haast Pass

finally stopped raining! 

were sooo happy!!! 

Last and final stop of the day was Lake Wanaka – probably one of my favorite spots in NZ. The town is a little ski town, the lake is very blue and has a great mountain backdrop. This town sprouted up after Queenstown became really popular – so more locals go there instead of the tourist and overprices town near by.

The girls and I did some jumping pics, had some fun by the water then had a couple drinks at a bar then headed back to the hostel. It was Karaoke night so lets just say my ears hurt in the morning.  At the bar our driver pulled us over and introduced us to a bartender who was from IU!!!! She left after her second year and came to NZ and now is working in that bar! Such a small world but it was really neat meeting another Hoosier!

Monday morning we woke up – had a delicious breakfast by the water, walked around and then headed out towards Queenstown around noon. 

sign in the bar - very fitting for today