Our first stop for this early morning was to Lake Wanaka. And it was absolutely beautiful! The sun was just about to rise and the stillness of the lake is both mesmerising and daunting. Rolling out of bed in this freezing morning just to see this little patch of heavenly beauty was definitely all worth it! Putting 'Lake Wanaka iSITE Visitor Centre' unto your GPS will lead you to the lakeshore of Lake Wanaka overlooking the Black Peak Mountain and surrounded by idle wild ducks not bothered by the cold.

Lake Wanaka at dawn

A beauty so perfect even before she wakes up!

Lake Wanaka iSITE Visitor Centre

Kung Fu fighting! yaahh! :)

We then headed to Puzzling World, Wanaka, a 5-minute drive away from the iSITE Visitor Centre. The place has heaps of free parking onsite. Puzzling World is known for its optical illusions and mind boggles. For NZ$20 (U$15) you can go at both the illusions room inside and the outside courtyard maze. The places to explore within are:

• 'The Great Maze'. An outside obstacle course designed to people to navigate their way through overbridges and narrow maze pathways with the aim to find four corner towers and the exit at the middle of the courtyard. We did not do this because we came in very early and the thought of trying to get out of a self-inflicted misery of being stuck on a maze on a 0°C morning was the very least appealing to us that time. LOL!

• The Illusion Room. Simply like how the name implies, is an area inside Puzlling World to trick your mind with illusionary displays. It is an indoor courtyard filled with displays of architectural illusions.
  

Proper hand hygiene is a must!

• Ames Room. Allows midget people to finally tower amongst their vertically-enhance friends. After leaving the room you get to see a video playback of how you vertically stretch just by crossing the room.

• Hall of Following Faces. Remember when Game of Thrones introduced the Hall of Faces at Season 6? This room is pretty much like that. Fortunately, unlike GOT, these are not skinned faces of the dead (phew!). They, however, still follow you around with their death stare as you move acorss the room. So, it still is equally scary!    

The Hall of Following Faces

• Wall Wonders. The long hall of floor-to-ceiling wall artworks of optical illusions and brain teasers.

• Hologram Hall. Contains various 3D hologram photos encased on a glass panels inside the wall. This is also the home of the Plasma Globe which has always been Kareena's favourite piece of science-based novelty item long before she even understood what it truly is.

  Plasma Globe. A glass sphere containing various gasses and high voltage electrode.

  
  
  

• Tilted House. Personal fave right here! The house (or the room) is placed on a 15° angle. As the whole place has no windows in it, people inside has no reference of the true horizontal. This make exhibits seem to go uphill on its own and for people to struggle walking on a relatively flat surface. Imagine doing the 6am-walk-of-shame alongside other crisscrossing and stumbling tourists/locals minus the stench of booze. It was heaps fun!
  

There are also free areas inside Puzzling World if you do not want to wander inside the illusion rooms. This where you get play with rope puzzles and wooden brick brain teasers. The photo-op at their Tumbling Towers display at the facade is also for free.







We then headed back to Queenstown and on our way we dropped by at a popular stop-off, the Roaring Meg Kawarua Gorge. 



Roaring Meg is a power station waterfall that drops into the Kawarau River with crystal blue water that literally seemed to have popped out off a photoshop postcard of paradise. No single piece of rubbish can be found within its loud, crashing water. It was soo clear we bet you can even drink it straight from its stream!

We continued the drive to Arrowtown. This quaint little town looks as if it was torn out of the page of a historical miners’ book out of the Wild West. It has small stalls, shops selling antiques and retail booth of locally-mined precious stones. 

even the modern day real estate agent office was in a building no more than 5metres high

These were relatively small places around Otago. And there are even more breathtaking towns to explore within and stories to write and tell. And that alone is reason enough to just continue exploring this lovely region of New Zealand.