40 | Wanaka

We left Franz Josef after 2 nights to enter Haast country. Juilius Von Haast was the first to start mapping this region and named literally everything he found after himself from the beach, the town and an extremely rare Eagle only found on one mountain range in the area.

Fox Glacier is the less commercialized but just as beautiful glacier down the road from Franz Josef where Lake Matheson is located. Known as the mirror lake, on a clear day you can see the perfect reflection. We were in luck. The sun was low in the sky and cast picturesque shadows of the mountains across the valley bottom. We had 1 hour off the coach to walk around the outside of the lake and take a few pictures. We managed to get most of us in a group photo before deciding which path to take back before we ran out of time.

We moved along the Makarora highway towards Wanaka taking in some of the mountain scenes from the Lord Of the Rings before reaching the town at the edge of the stunning lake. We checked in at Base but we were last of the bus meaning last in the queue for check in. Anouska saved us from an hour wait by checking us in as a group, absolute star!

We walked down to the shore of Lake Wanaka which stretches across the front of the town. A triathlon was going on whilst we were there which included a 3km swim, 180km bike ride and 40km run. Just a walk in the park then. Some athletes were finishing at 23:30 for the ones crazy enough to do it twice. After setting our towels down I dipped my foot in to see how cold it was. Wow it was seriously cold. I took two steps in then jumped backwards causing me to shiver immediately. I was first in and didn’t exactly make it look appetizing for the others to join me before I swam out to the pontoon. We all made the 50m swim before jumping off the jetty a few times and stopping long enough for a few photos on my action camera. The lake is one of my favorites and I would have loved to stay longer.

It was dinnertime and I saw a fish and chips place earlier on in the day which I wanted to check out. I managed to get two pieces of cod and chips for $10. Not too shabby and wrapped in newspaper too. They don’t serve it like that in Australia. We watched the last of the runners come in before calling it a night.

#Food #Nature #Lake #Accommodation #Tour