Up about 8:15, showered, breakfast. Usually I'm one of the first ones up in the morning, but today I was one of the last ones. All the Brit's from the Magic bus in my room didn't go out partying last night, and got up early to go skiing.
Left about 9:30, went to supermarket for a few things, then filled up with petrol, then headed up to Wanaka via the Crown Range Road, the scenic alpine route to Wanaka. The summit is over 1000m, and there's a lot of snow up there and it's cold! Great views, though.
Got to Wanaka about 10:45, stopped at the lakefront to take a pictures of the awesome mountains, then headed to Puzzling World (http://www.puzzlingworld.com), which has a huge 3-dimensional maze and optical illusion land. The maze has 1.5km of paths to follow, the sign inside, after you've been walking for a while, says that most people walk 3 to 5 km before finishing the maze. The goal is to visit each of the four towers in the four corners, then find your way to the exit. The maze has stairs and bridges too. I finished in about 45 minutes, average, by following the right hand rule!
Then went to optical illusion part, which was cool! Had a hologram room with a bunch of cool holograms. One was a hologram of a microscope, and you could look through the microscope eyepiece and see an enlarged microchip. They had a room that's built on a 15 degree angle, which throws off your balance and your concept of "up and down", with displays that look like water is flowing up hill, and stuff. Another illusion room that looks like a normal room when you view it from an outside window, but when you walk inside the room, it's all weird, one end being really tiny, the other being large. It looks normal because of the perceptive created by the sqaures and lines inside.
The best two things were the Hall of Following Faces, an incredible optical illusion. The huge room had a whole bunch of concave faces (of famous people) mounted in it, but yuor eyes are tricked into seeing them as though they are sticking out of the wall. More incredibly, as you walk around the room, all the faces turn their heads to look at you!!! It was eerie! The other great thing was the bathroom. Part of it was built like an old Roman bathhouse, then the back wall is a perspective painting showing the last half of the Roman bathhouse (with some guys sitting on the crapper). Looking at it from the centre of the room was way cool, it looked virtually real!
I then had lunch at their cafe, and left about 1:00 for Haast. The drive from Wanaka to Haast, through Mount Aspiring National Park, is one of the most incredible drives I've ever done. Huge, steep peaks, waterfalls, deep valleys. WOW!
Got to Haast about 4:30, and booked into Wilderness Backpackers, very nice place. Hardly anyone here, but Haast is not a tourist destination town at all. They do have river tours on a jetboat, one company is River Safaris, it's supposed to be real good, so I tried to book it, but they don't have anyone else for tomorrow, so it probably won't go. Also, the lady at the hostel said the weather is supposed to close in tomorrow, so he probably wouldn't do it in crappy weather anyway.
Went to the supermarket and got some chicken nuggets and had supper. 3 Edmontonians (or was it Calgarians...I forget) checked in later, and I talked to them a bit, then tried calling Rosemary, no answer. A little later played Monopoly with Chris and Jill, two-thirds of the Edmontians. After three hours, Jill and I had bankrupted Chris), and Jill and I were just swapping big money as we landed on each others properties, so we called it a tie at about 11:45. Then to bed.
Mid-day started to cloud over today. The previous two days, in Queenstown, however, were perfect! Not a cloud in the sky, beautiful blue, sunny skies.
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