Wanaka & Fox Glacier, New Zealand

Roadtrippin’ New Zealand has been flippin’ sweet! Over the past few days we have spent a fair amount of time on the road checking out a couple different towns on the South Island. Turns out, just about every major town is next to an amazingly huge, SUPER blue, beautiful lake. Our rental car is the cheapest one possible and doesn’t even have a radio that works so we’ve been singing to Tyson to keep us all entertained. Haha! We drove an hour North from Queenstown to a little town called Wanaka. We tried to check into our hotel around 11am, but they gave us that all too familiar look like we were crazy trying to check in early and told us to come back at 2pm.

Since we had three hours to kill we drove over to a unique little kids place called Puzzling World. It’s just the type of place a group of townspeople would come up with if they had the sole intention to build the biggest tourist trap they could. I’m sure they all laughed and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we build a few buildings tilted to the side right next to the highway that makes everyone want to stop and take a ‘selfie’…then the next guy says “Oh oh, what if we put a maze behind it and charged people $15 each to walk through it?”:….then everyone’s eyes open wide and someone says, “Remember those magic eye books our kids used to make us buy back in the day? What if we put those on the wall and a few other random things and charged people another $15 to look at those? Yeah Yeah, and let’s throw in a café and a gift shop, because obviously!”…then they all high-five and walk out of the room. Well, this is that place. They have various areas with all types of optical illusions you remember from your childhood, but these are framed and on the walls. There’s one room that’s kind of cool that is tilted and you have to walk through it without running into another tourist or passing out from the overwhelming feeling of vertigo. Your eyes really play tricks on you and we had to get out of there fast because we actually felt a pretty woozy in that room.

After a quick stroll through we were done with Puzzling World. We decided to head into the main strip of town that happens to be right next to a huge lake. We grabbed some Subway sandwiches and had a nice little picnic next to the water. A ton of birds surrounded us just waiting for some food to drop. When one chip dropped they all fought each other for it. When we were done, we threw them the rest of our scraps and walked over to the gelato place to see what flavors they had. We all got our own cone and Tyson devoured his vanilla gelato in about two minutes, then we headed back to the hotel to check in.

Once we got to our room, we looked outside and saw there was a little baby swing and a trampoline in the back of the hotel so I took Tyson outside to play for a bit. The swing was so rickety we only spent about two seconds on it and then went over to the trampoline before it fell apart on us. There was a big playground in town so we decided to head over there so Tyson could play at a legit park. It has a huge dinosaur slide that Tyson was excited to go down and ended up spending most of the time climbing up and down the thing. The lake was right next to the park and it had a little stream running through it that a bunch of kids were running in. Tyson immediately grabbed a handful of a rocks and started throwing them into the water to hear them splash. Unfortunately, he got a little too close to the water and slipped in a bit getting his pants all wet. We wanted to go to dinner afterwards, so we decided to sit outside to dry off for a while. Marshall was teaching Tyson how to skip rocks. I tried too, but the only problem is that no rocks would skip. Dang it! Meanwhile, Tyson decided to start filling up my boots with rocks until I was able to figure it out. Thanks kiddo. Once Tyson was all dried off we walked over to a restaurant for dinner. We got some grub and then headed back to the hotel to call it a night.

The next day we checked out of the hotel and drove three hours to an area called Fox Glacier. The drive was rainy just about the whole way so we weren’t able to see much of the view. There were tons of one lane bridges we drove over along the way, which made it feel pretty sketchy, but we made it. Luckily there was hardly anyone on the road so we didn’t have to worry about passing another car on most of the bridges. About half way there we came across a tiny town (population 10?) with literally just one café that was also connected to the only grocery store in town. We stopped in to grab lunch and for whatever reason the place was swamped with a bunch of teenage kids. I guess that’s the cool place to hang out. Tyson brought his tennis ball inside and was throwing it around the café and it kept rolling under all the kids’ tables so they were kicking the ball back and forth with him. It kept Tyson nice and entertained.
We drove another two couple hours and eventually made our way to the hotel. We checked in and then drove into town to see what our dinner options were. There were three restaurants to choose from so we made our decision based on the hotel owner’s recommendation. It was a saloon that had a nice cozy table next to the fireplace. We had a nice dinner and then headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

The next morning we drove to a café next to a beautiful lake called Lake Matheson. We had a delicious breakfast and then set out on a walk by the lake. Luckily it was a much nicer day than the day before. Apparently in Fox Glacier it can be pouring down rain and super windy one day and then nice and sunny the next. We walked about 15 minutes to a lookout point that had a great view of the lake with the snowy mountains in the background. If we continued walking it would take us about an hour and a half to go all the way around the lake. We decided to make it a short stroll and turn around to head back to the car.
After Tyson woke up from his nap we went to a café in town to grab lunch. I noticed they had a mocha shake on their menu so I had to try it out. It was quite heavenly. By the time we were finished with lunch the weather had changed on us. We had planned to go check out the glacier but didn’t think we’d get a good view in the foggy weather. Since it was only five minutes out of town we decided to drive over the bottom of the glacier to scope it out. Marshall ran over to the beginning of the trail to see how far we’d have to walk to get a glimpse of the glacier. He came back saying it was pretty far away. We decided to head back to the hotel and come back in the morning if the weather was nice.

That evening Tyson and I had leftovers for dinner while Marshall wanted to go have dinner by himself in town. Sometimes he likes to have some quiet time by himself to just relax. We’ve spent 24/7 together the past 6 months so we try to give each other breaks whenever we can. He said he had fun catching up on NFL highlights and checking emails on his phone.
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Tomorrow we’re driving four hours back to Queenstown to hang out for the next few days. Can’t believe we’ll be home next week! We’re getting excited! Marshall has already lined up to start working at his previous company two days after we get back. We will also be moving into our new apartment on Mercer Island the day after we get home. We actually lived in these apartments before we bought our condo and are looking forward to going back. As for my job, I’m still in the process of looking for an Accounting Manager position. Wish me luck!