Today was my second day in Wanaka, which is located in Central Otago about an hour north of Queenstown, the self-styled “adventure capital of the world” and by far the most expensive place in New Zealand. So far, I like Wanaka much more than Queenstown because the atmosphere is less about party, party, party and spend, spend, spend. It’s got more of a small town feel, yet it’s nestled on a lake every bit as beautiful as Lake Wakatipu (the lake Queenstown juts up against) and surrounded by stunning mountains. I like it here, and it’s not quite as expensive as Queenstown, meaning my wallet hasn’t had a hole burned in it quite yet!

That said, I’ve done my share of interesting activities since I’ve been here. On Tuesday, I met up with Johanna, one of the girls that I did jade carving with in Hokitika, because we both happened to book the same hostel for the same number of nights. She took me up to Puzzling World, which is a unique attraction boasting rooms full of illusions and the first “modern-style” maze in the world. We bought the $10 ticket that got us into all of the attractions and then spent a good hour in the illusions area. We looked at holograms and a wall of 168 faces that follow you as you move around. We stood in a perspective room similar to those used in The Lord of the Rings that had a high ceiling at one end and a low ceiling at the other. Boy, did I look like a giant on their video when I stood on the low-ceilinged side of the room! The coolest illusion room was definitely the tilted one, where the slanted floor made everything look off-balance. Balls “rolled uphill” and swings hung sidways. Quite weird. The pictures look pretty cool though; unfortunately I haven’t managed to upload those yet, but as always, I’ll let you know when I do.

The Great Maze surrounds the Puzzling World building and has four corners–the yellow, green, blue, and red towers. There are two different challenges. The first is to find the four towers in any order and then find your way to the finish (which is right next to the start), which takes 30 mins-1 hour on average. The other is to find the towers in that specific order, which takes 1-1.5 hours. We chose the shorter challenge and were still in the maze until well after the main office closed. After about 45 minutes, we’d found all the towers, and it was very tempting to take one of the many emergency exits (for those with “limited time or patience”) rather than finding our way back because we were a bit sick of walking in circles and running into dead ends!

 Yesterday, both Johanna and I went paragliding. It was Johanna’s idea–she had wanted to go in Nelson but the wind didn’t cooperate–and I thought it sounded fun (and much cheaper than skydiving) so I went too. We drove up to Treble Cone, which was a very scenic drive in itself. Treble Cone is one of the ski slopes in Wanaka, so it’s not a bad sized mountain. We went up to about 800m to “Pub Corner,” where we stood as our tandem guides laid out the parachute on the side of the mountain and suited us up. This suit was essentially some straps and a puffy seat to sit on while in flight. Then, the wind changed, and we had to walk to another take-off point slightly further around the mountain. It was definitely interesting trying to do that with a giant seat bouncing against my legs with each step!

After one aborted takeoff attempt, we ran down the hill until the wind took the parachute…and then we were flying! What a great feeling. It was definitely quite different to skydiving, where you are always going down. Thermals pushed us upwards as we flew over the van that had taken us up the mountain and the people that were standing and waving at us. I don’t have a clue how long we were in the air, but I loved every minute of it. We flew over Treble Cone and the Twin Waterfalls running down the side of it. We saw the windy road that had brought us up the hill, along with Lake Wanaka, Glendhu Bay, Rocky Mountain, and the Matukituki Valley. I don’t think it can get more scenic than that! At one point, Rob asked me if I liked roller coasters. I didn’t have time to regret my answer before he pulled us into a corkscrew spin. We flew towards the ground with that same stomach-dropping feeling that any good roller-coaster will give you, but I think it was much cooler. At another point, Rob asked if I’d had a shower yet as he flew directly at the waterfall! Eventually, we did have to land–which essentially involved just sticking my legs out and grinding to a halt on my butt as Rob tried not to fall over me–but then we got to watch the two other paragliders have the same fun that we did before we drove back. Definitely an amazing experience, and one I’d love to try again (they did warn us that flying is addictive), if only my budget would let me!

I’ve got plenty of pictures that both Rob and I took on the flight down, as well as a lot of scenic shots of Wanaka that I’ve taken in the last few days, in my Wanaka album. Also, I’ve managed to upload 2 videos from paragliding–with at least 3 more yet to come. You can watch those below.