New Zealand's South Island - Part 4: Wanaka

Continuing on with my day trips....This particular day I went to quite a few different places, but the main part of my day was spent in the Wanaka area.

The first place I stopped was maybe a 10-15 minute drive from where I was staying. It was called Lake Hayes and was supposed to be a nice walk and the lake was supposed to have a nice reflective view of the area.  Unfortunately for me, on that particular day there was some kind of biking marathon based from that location, so it was quite busy and difficult to find parking.  I did manage to find a spot eventually, and started to walk around the lake, but I wasn't able to go all the way around as part of the path had been submerged by water and I didn't particularly feel like soaking my shoes.

After that I went and spent an hour or so in Arrowtown, an old Chinese settlement. There was a market going on in one of the parks and so I stopped and had lunch there before moving on.  They also had quite a few honey shops around, and so I did some honey tasting as well.

There were lots of little souvenir shops. The street had a ghost mining town vibe.

There was a path you could take where some of the old Chinese housing was preserved for tourism....

When I finished in Arrowtown, I decided to drive out to Wanaka to go to the lavender farm and maybe look for some more places to do some hiking.  The road to get there was pretty fun to drive on. It was called the Crown Range Road, and it took you up into the alpine kind of area in the mountains. There were a lot of really steep, 180 switchbacks which meant some slow driving (on the switchbacks the speed limit went from 90 to 5 or 10 km/h depending on how steep and sharp it was. On this road there were quite a few areas where you could pull over and admire the views, or stop and check out the pretty lupin growing on the hills. It took a bit longer than expected to get there but, I won't complain because it was absolutely beautiful!

Click here to watch.

At the lavender farm, they had a lot of products you could test and buy.  Of course I had to get some lavender ice cream too! (They had a few different flavors, straight lavender, boysenberry-lavender, and manuka-lavender). Then I took a walk through the garden area. It was really pretty and there were so many different kinds of lavender.  They also had a rose garden and some different animals around as well.

The horse by the tree was grumpy. It gave me the evil eye when I tried to take its picture   

It was peaceful. So many bees! Click here to watch if it doesn't work.

After that I went out to the town of Wanaka itself. There is a large lake, with some nice mountain views, and there is the famous "That Wanaka Tree".   The tree is a bit unusual as it is growing out of the lake all by itself. I spent a bit of time by the lake before heading out again.

Lake Wanaka. Click here if it doesn't work.

"That Wanaka Tree"

Around Wanaka there are a lot of hiking trails, but since I got there in the afternoon, I had a limited amount of time for hiking (plus it would be a couple hours to drive back as well).

In the end I decided to go to Diamond Lake (a different one from the one near Glenorchy..why there is more than one Diamond Lake, I don't know...). It was maybe a 30-40 minute drive from Wanaka, and there were lots of other hiking trails on the way, but they were 4-5 hour hikes and I didn't want to be coming back when it was dark so... The Diamond Lake track went around the little Diamond Lake and took about 45 minutes to get to the lookout point.  Getting up to the lookout you had to go through a bit of forest before it opened up and I got so many bug bites! The lookout was quite pretty and let you see all the way back to Lake Wanaka.

First glimpse of Diamond Lake 

Looking down on Diamond Lake

Out of the forest!

Daisies everywhere!

Looking out at Lake Wanaka

From the lookout...

Diamond Lake Lookout. Click here if it doesn't work.

On the way back to Queenstown, I started out on a different road but ended up back on the Crown Range Road, and I was able to stop at some more points that I couldn't the first time and took a few more pretty pictures.

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New Zealand trip posts: | Part 1: Christchurch | Part 2: Queenstown | Part 3: Glenorchy and Paradise | Part 4: Wanaka | Part 5: Hikes | Part 6: Invercargill | Part 7: Moeraki Boulders | Part 8 Coming soon!
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