Buildings and Mountains (or Installment 2)

The following morning, we left Mt. Cook and drove a short way to Wanaka, this quaint little inland city that we all just loved. We pulled into the hostel (which oddly felt like summer camp) in the early afternoon and had the entire day to see beautiful Wanaka. Since we didn’t go kayaking at Mt. Cook, we decided to go on Lake Wanaka, which is this absolutely gorgeous lake surrounded by mountains. While the water was a bit chilly, the views were breathtaking. After drying off, we went to one of Wanaka’s main attractions: Puzzle World. Obviously, we were all pretty stoked about going. :) Basically Puzzle World is half Cosi Science Museum with all these neat optical illusions and half outdoor maze. It took us about an hour or 2 to make it through the maze, having to reach all 4 towers. (Brandon, it was like “A-MAZE-ing Mirrors mixed with corn maze). Needless to say, it was awesome.

For dinner, we read that there was a free Sausage Sizzle in the park and since we’re all about free food, we went and had some dinner. After dinner (or napping for some of us) we decided to check out the cinema. Everyone had told us to go to this cute one-of-a-kind cinema that they have and I am SO glad we did. It’s this little art house cinema that plays (relatively) new movies and makes their own homemade cookies and ice cream. The theater doesn’t have typical seats; instead you sit on couches and pillows that have been put together in this giant room. We watched Revolutionary Road (don’t watch if you’re looking for something upbeat) but it was good. And the homemade cookies and ice cream were definitely worth it. We may or may not have gone back to get more during intermission. One of the coolest things about Wanaka was that it had such a small town feel. The same guy who rented us our kayaks worked at the cinema and there were lots of other people that we had seen before, whether it was travelers from Mt. Cook or people around town. Definitely one of my favorite NZ places.

After only one night in Wanaka, we took a beautiful drive down to Dunedin (you should probably just be google imaging these places as I write about them…) which is at the southern part of the island. Dunedin is a little rainy university city that is just off of the Otago Peninsula. Or maybe it was just rainy while we were there. Regardless, after setting up in our hostel (which felt like I was staying at my great aunt’s house with all of her cats) we walked around the city, stopping in coffee shops and getting more groceries. The evening was chill and we enjoyed the free sauna/hot tub that was there. We wanted to be well rested for all the adventure we’d have to tomorrow, after all…