Slowing down in Wanaka

We’ve gotten a bit ahead of ourselves here by already posting about the two Roy hikes. It’s time to take a step back, breathe, and relax a bit – kind of like we did in Wanaka for a few days.

We’d been traveling in Wyatt relatively non-stop (one night per location apart from Wellington) for about a week, so we were excited for the opportunity to make Wanaka our base for several days. We stayed at an AirBnb a couple blocks from the town center and spent our time on day hikes, wine tasting, and exploring the region. The AirBnb had enough of a kitchen for us to make most dinners and breakfasts there, including Thanksgiving dinner! We even found a new friend to share Thanksgiving with, Ute (‘oo-tah’) from Bremen, who was staying at the place for a few days as well and who contributed a nice local Pinot to the meal. A roast, green beans with toasted almonds, mashed potato (Elisse’s specialty), roasted kumara, bread, kiwi fruit, cucumbers, and home made pecan pie (we had to buy a $4 pie plate) rounded out a somewhat untraditional but still fun holiday meal.

Wanaka in the spring also apparently has huge swaths of lupins, a flower Elisse really enjoys, and we found lovely fields of them in all shades of purple, pink, and white. Our sunset walk to Eely Point along the lakeside trail out of town gave us amazing views of fields of flowers next to the lake with the mountains behind.