South Island Trip Day #3

Day 3 was jam packed full of activities! For starters it was Sarah's birthday so she busted out the tiara immediately (and wore it non-stop for 2 days). Our day began at Knight's Point on the West coast which had an absolutely gorgeous lookout over the Tasman Sea! Let me tell you... from here, it looked as if the Tasman went on forever!!!! Then we were off to Ship Creek. Ship Creek had everything going for it: awesome rocks on the beach, beautiful sea, dolphins, cool rocks to climb on and crashing waves... but, it did have one thing going against it. SANDFLIES. They're like mosquitoes but the bites hurt for 10x longer and are 10x itchier. But don't worry, I only walked away with 23 of them on one foot. :o The rest of the days activities were dependent on the one goal we had in mind..... make it to Queenstown by sunset.

We stopped at Lake Wanaka which was absolutely gorgeous in every aspect. The water was crystal clear blue, the mountains were in the background and it smelled absolutely fantastic. We then stopped at Lake Hawea... it was gorgeous but not as picturesque as Lake Wanaka. The city of Wanaka brought a kickass experience.... PUZZLING WORLD..... It's like a museum full of illusions and puzzles for people of all ages. We went in and our first puzzle to complete was the maze. We attempted to find the colored towers in the order that the people suggested was the "difficult" way and really.... finding the towers was not all that difficult (I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty good at mazes). The most difficult part was literally finding out way back to the start after hitting all four towers in order. We simply could NOT figure it out... so what did we do....the unbelievable. We cheated. We absolutely climbed under a wall that we knew would lead us to the beginning and eventually the exit. I never thought it would be so difficult to cheat, but it was. I wanted so badly to finish it but I was just so frustrated with not being able to find the start that I did it... I cheated. But, I was finally out to do other things and that felt great :)

After Puzzling World, we searched for churches for Becca and went to get groceries. The search for the church failed miserably so we just decided to head to Queenstown. Upon arrival in Queenstown, we got a whole roasted chicken, sat by the lake and ate chicken while drinking the worst sparkling red wine ever and eventually had dessert. THICK MINTS! Clearly the best invention ever. Then it was lights out for the night so we would finally be able to get to our hostel the next day.