It was the coldest
morning during this trip. Outside temperature only -1°C, our car was nearly
frosted. When my father-in-law went to check the car, he found his glasses
lying nicely at the clit between the wipers. Imagine the glasses were still
there with no scratch at all after we drove for nearly 300 KM yesterday. It is a big deal for us!
Our first place of
interest today is to explore the Wanaka, the place surrounded with blue lakes
and rugged mountain ranges, and is home to the Mount Aspiring national park.
The Wanaka itself isn’t big, but its offer of spectacular scenery and superb
range of outdoor activities has turned it to be another popular place worth to
visit in recent year. It is less populated and commercialized compared to Queenstown.
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| Lake Wanaka, picture taken at different lookout points | |
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Wanaka town scenery
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We also made a
short visit to Stuart Landsborough’s puzzling world. It is a pretty cool, and
strange place because of the three-dimensional and mind-altering puzzles it
gives. Wanaka is really a beautiful place to stay, especially at this Autumn
season, most trees were turned into brown, yellow and red attractive colors.
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| Had fun at Puzzling world. They do offer many illustration games, the imbalanced room, the room which makes one big and one small, the leaning tower and the classic toilet wallpaper (which is pasted at the entrance of toilet) |
After a lunch at
the lakeside, we took the Crown range road to visit our next destination –
Arrowtown.
Arrowtown is 20 minutes away from Queenstown, and while the Crown
range road is shorter way to journey between Queenstown and Wanaka, the travel
time is longer than the usual route through Cromwell. We chose to take this
route, part of it because of the stunning view of Cardrona valley, and it is
also the highest highway in NZ with an altitude of 1121 meter. What we didn’t
expect is the steep and zigzag road from the Crown terrace towards Queestown,
until we were there. But, this road is worth to visit. We passed by the
historic Cardrona Hotel – one of the oldest hotel in NZ, look down the colorful
trees in Arrow valley and the ranges of Remarkables, Crown and Criffle. At the
high peak of the road, we even witnessed a flight did its landing at Queenstown
airport. This is definitely one of the coolest and unforgettable road journeys
during this trip.
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| Cardrona valleys. There was a couple flew all the way from China to shoot for their outdoor wedding picture here. |
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| Top: The farmlands near Arrowtown; Bottom: At the lookout point which offers the panoramic view of Otago region |
We missed the
annual event of Arrowtown Autumn Festival when we were there. The place is
supposed to be surrounded by many colorful trees during the festival, which happened
to be a week ago before our arrival. The Arrowtown itself is another small town
but is definitely a tourist-spot, because all the shops are nicely furnished
just like new buildings.
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| The distinctive colorful Autumn trees at Arrowtown |
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| The Arrowtown itself. |
After a short stop
at Arrowtown, we took another 20 min to Queenstown. Our apartment for the next
three nights were one of the best stays we ever been during this road trip. It’s
located in the main street of Queenstown, and so near to the Queenstown’s
famous Fergburger. Of cause, we had the burgers for dinner tonight. But, things
at such a high tourism/commercialized town aren’t cheap. The three burgers cost
us almost RM100!
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| Line up for Fergburgers |
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| Dinners and the apartments we stayed |
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