Where in the world is Maya?: The Adventure to Auckland Begins

My flight back to the states leaves the 12^th of February – so I have about a week to get from south of the South Island to Auckland, which is about close to the top of the North Island. Now that my work at the University of Otago is winding down, I hope to take this last bit of time and see as much of New Zealand as I can see!

We rented a car and will head North up the West Coast from Dunedin to Auckland. When we started our venture a few days ago, we headed out of Dunedin westward toward Queenstown – the adventure sport destination. Due to the tourist-ey nature of Queenstown we decided to stay in the nearby Wanaka, which is still a bit touristy but yet is much smaller. One of the roadside attractions while entering Wanaka is the Puzzling World museum. For a fee guests essentially are mice in a giant labyrinth. There are apparently tons of puzzles on the tables in the café and several optical illusion rooms. Although we didn’t actually pay to enter, we enjoyed watching people in the 2 layer maze and looking at the Leaning Tower of Wanaka!

The Leaning Tower of Wanaka!

We ventured around the lake on the little roads enjoying the brilliant blue coloring on road bikes and on foot! It is really an amazing and unreal color. I think these may be glacial lakes, which may explain the gorgeous coloring. As the glaciers slide over the rocks, they grind the basal rock material into a fine powder, which reflects light in a really beautiful manner. However, this is just my speculation of where the blue coloring comes from – I still need to do a bit more digging for this one!

Snow Covered Peaks in the Distance!

Looking out over the lake

This was a river that flowed under a bridge that we rode our bikes over. The colors were so pretty, pictures can't quite capture it!

The day we went out riding it was super windy. The clouds were approaching lenticular shape (when they are really thin and spread out). This only happens when there are really strong winds!

I love the rivers, they are so pretty.

We have a ways more to drive and New Zealand roads are crazy! They are some of the most windy, narrow roads with huge elevation changes! We took what we thought was a shortcut over to Queenstown from Wanaka -- but soon realized that the "shortcut" was actually a mountain pass. Our poor little rented Nissan was really struggling.