Lake Wanaka - Up Close and Far Away!

Thursday 19 March

Another glorious day - we may wake up to single digit temperatures but the autumn sun is working hard to give us a long-awaited summer!

Morning means less likelihood of wind across the lake so we grabbed snacks (a pack of chippies and water bottles) and set off exploring in the Razor Kayaks inflatable kayak.

We paddled out towards the peninsula opposite, with Roy's Peak on our right, then followed its coastline round to Paddock Bay where we saw zero trout, but lots of streams of bubbles popping up to the surface and in one area a whole bunch of large iron hoop-things like cast iron croquet hoops - bizarre! Had a wee snack of chicken, sage & burnt butter chippies and a white peach - dropped a few crumbs overboard to try and tempt the fish, but no luck.

We met a lovely guy named Wayne who was out on his SUP - he and his Swedish wife love Glendhu Bay so much they camp here for 2/3 of the year then spend the rest of the time in Sweden. He gave us heaps of ideas for walks and adventures - we’ll have to hit him up next time we visit and pick his brains for more insider tips!

Back at the campsite we were hot & tired so bravely went in for a dip in the lake… I managed roughly 3 seconds before popping up uttering expletives as it was pretty darn cold! 🥶

The sunshine was scorchio so we soon warmed up again and had a sneaky ice lolly for dessert after lunch. 😜

After a snooze we saddled up my knees in my Spider-Man support webs and headed a few kms up the road to visit Diamond Lake. This was a little underwhelming so we took the next path to the Lake Wānaka lookout - up, up, up we climbed, zigzagging up the mountainside and scaling a few hundred stairs.

The view at the top was stupendous, and worth every puff & pant and knee twinge of the climb - most of Lake Wānaka and its many arms and bays lay spread out before us - wow! The first pic below has Paddock Bay in the foreground, where we were kayaking just a few hours previously; the second looks north towards the Haast Pass; the third looks down to Glendhu Bay with Banjo just a tiny dot along the shoreline,

Coming down we watched some climbers scaling the sheer cliff faces of Rocky Mountain - they looked so tiny against the huge rock faces.

Then we headed back to camp for pork chop dinner and a magical pastel sunset over the lake.

No sign of the aurora that had been hyped on a post online… but at 3am Louis went to the camp toilets, I went a few minutes later, stopped to stargaze and hunt for the aurora - and then he locked me out of Banjo thinking I was still fast asleep !!! Should have gone to SpecSavers 🤣🤓