Wanaka...

This place is beautiful. Melissa, you need to come here. It is like Canmore, where the locals just wander around downtown and chat, but with more palm-like trees. The view is gorgeous and the lake is so blue. Snow capped mountains in the back, unfortunately for the ski bums the season is ending right now.

Went to the NZAF museum. Did you know that New Zealand had more people per capita participating in the armed forces in The Battle of Britain than any other country? Seriously!? Tons of pilots too, most did their training in Canada. Very cool museum and Ryan and I spent about 2 hours there. Looking at a bunch of war birds (that still work and can be rented for movies and commercials...) and reading about the NZ men of the forces. Fantastic setup and musuem, people should be touring NZ and hitting up places like this! And it is on the Wanaka airfield, so you're not sure if the airplane noises are from the museum sound system or the runway...

Also went to Puzzling world. There are illusions galore, with the room that is tilted... it messes with your brain for sure... and a room to make the person on the left look big and the person on the right look wee... think LOTR. There is also a huge maze outside that took us 30 minutes to navigate. There are 4 towers, each in a corner, and we have to get ourselves to each one and then back to the start. Not as easy as it sounds, and I found myself saying "I think I've made a huge mistake" a couple times.

The drive was gorgeous as usual, and after a small snag (we found ourselves where the road ended... then had to turn around to find it again...) we got home and unloaded groceries.

$1.50 petrol, and that is cheap compared to Omarama, so day trips are dear. (That is an ism, nothing here is expensive...)

-B