Wanaka

Lake Wanaka

Dull dreary morning in Wanaka early morning, but it turned better as the day went on, as usual here... 4 seasons in each day!

We had a lazy morning, we all needed it! Frey made egg sandwiches all round, it's been nice having a decent kitchen to cook in, and then we headed down to the lake.

'That Wanaka tree'

There is a tree there that is very famous in the Instagram NZ photo world, known as "that Wanaka tree"... It's a willow tree that was planted as a fence post about 70 years ago to keep sheep at bay, but is now usually submerged under water in the lake, and has survived and grown, where the others have not. However, despite going there 5, yes 5, times over 2 days, it was never under water . It was easy to spot where it is though on the banks as you can always see a big gaggle of people there!

Liss scaring off the other tourists!

We waited patiently for a number of foreign tourists to finish their posing for pics, but after about 10 minutes it became clear that they weren't going to photograph in turn! Having watched in horror as another family came in from the back side a day or so ago and let their kids climb on the tree, and then wander off again, we then got to the point after 5 patients visits of realising that it was actually no different to the other tourists walking right up to it and standing in front posing for ages each.

So when Liss asked if she could climb we said yep and so she did.... There was quite a bit of shouting from the other photographers, but it's a great way to clear people away... Oops! All of the photos we have seen of this tree are beautiful sunset photos etc of the tree in still water...it's not quite the same when it's not in water, it's kind of just another tree but it's very pretty as a little lone tree goes, with a great backdrop of the Southern Alps and the Mount Aspiring National Park.

This afternoon we decided to try out the little Paradiso cinema in Wanaka. It's a local independent cinema, that onto has two screens and its unique in that it doesn't have traditional cinema seating, it has an open top Morris Minor, airplane and bus seats and a bunch of comfy sofas instead. It also still has intermissions when you can buy hot homemade cookies straight from the oven, or even meals on China plates that you can take back to your sofa to eat.

We watched Baby Boss, the film was what we expected. We sat first in the car then moved to sofas, and ate hot cookies at half time- it was a fab afternoon and just what we needed after a busy couple of weeks.