52. Wanaka

At the southern tip of Lake Wanaka lies the town of Wanaka, a popular resting spot en route to the tourist honeypot of Queenstown. Like most major towns in the South Island, Wanaka appears to have no other function other than to cater to tourists exploring the surrounding scenic beauty. It's all restaurants, B&B and watersports rental shops, in fact an almost exact replica of Queenstown in miniature. In fact I was just reading that Wanaka is the new Queenstown, which is easy to see. Queenstown was in danger of being strangled in a tangle of bungee jumping cords even while we were there, and Wanaka has as nice a natural setting with much less tourist tat. Of course, now that all that sort of thing has apparently moved to Wanaka, Queenstown is set to be the new Wanaka in a few years' time.

We got up early Saturday, checked out and retraced our drive to Fox Glacier, stopped for breakfast then drove for about six hours through what I think was the nicest scenery of the trip. We drove along the West Coast between mountains and the ocean, then turned inland, driving alongside beautiful green-blue lakes hemmed in by mountains.The weather was perfect and quite warm, and allowed for perfect mountain reflections in the lake.