LOVED… Puzzling World & playing on the shores of Lake Wanaka

A highlight of our holiday was ‘Puzzling World‘ in Wanaka. Dan and I had visited it over ten years ago, when the original maze was there, but since then an amazing array of attractions have been added.

The maze is challenging, with 1.5km of passages. I’m sure I saw a sign saying ‘On average a person walks 5km completing it’! The challenge is to walk to each of the four, coloured corners – and then find your way out (takes most people half an hour to an hour to complete). If that’s too easy – you do the corners in colour order (which can take an hour and a half to complete!).

Charlotte reached the first corner before any of us – and continued on the winning streak, beating her Daddy to the remaining three corners. Alice and Sophie weren’t so enthusiastic to find all four corners, but were happy to find one.

After finding one corner Alice got very distracted by the Roman toilets…

and the modern toilets were equally fascinating! I then carried on with Sophie and Alice into the other exhibitions. My personal favourite was the ‘Sculptillusion Gallery’. I could have sat there for hours. It was a beautifully lit space, with streams of natural light, air and beautiful sculptures that toyed with the mind.

The children loved the ’tilted house’ (which I remember from years ago). Unfortunately I just didn’t have the stomach for the tilted house anymore – as fascinating and clever as it is – so I persuaded the children to move on as quickly as possible! I didn’t even manage a photograph – but Dan took one…

After a wonderful time, including a refreshing bite to eat in the large, spacious cafe, with a spacey mirrored ceiling and puzzles to play with on every table, we ventured outside to enjoy the sunshine and scenery.

On the opposite side of the road to Puzzling World is a fabulous walk up ‘Mt Iron‘ (which Dan and I enjoyed doing many years ago – unfortunately we couldn’t persuade the children and my ankle wasn’t really strong enough). On this occasion we enjoyed the scenery, on the flat ground, under the beautiful autumn trees (besides, after completing the maze I reckon Dan and Charlotte had already had their exercise!).

After a fabulous morning at Puzzling World we enjoyed a little time on the shore of Lake Wanaka, before driving back to Queenstown.

The playground on the lake front was a huge hit with Alice – especially the giant dinosaur slide!

And a playground with such a gorgeous setting is definitely pleasing for the adults too!

We were soon drawn away from the playground to find out what everyone was looking at in the lake – turns out a lot of fresh-water, LARGE, eels were gathered at the end of a jetty, where some people were feeding ducks.

Dan and Charlotte took a couple of kayaks out to get a closer look.

After Charlotte had enjoyed her kayaking, Dan took Sophie out on a pedal bike and I went out with Alice.

A fabulous day out, finished with a stunning drive back to Queenstown, through vineyards turning on the autumn winds.

Magic! I do hope you have found some things to love this week. Back to the simple things for me next week, but just had to make the holiday memories roll on for a while longer!

Sarah x

___________________________________________________________________

Linking up with….