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.

08:01am and you can still see the moon

One thing that we, the MaKareena's, learnt from this trip was to research everything. And by everything, please kindly include the sunrise and sunset times of each day. Factors that we failed to consider whilst planning. Along with Kareena's parents and sister, we created an itinerary of a roadtrip from Queenstown towards Mt Aoraki starting at 07:00am. We planned for this 3-hour drive to include soaking up on all the God-given beauty rushing through our car window. And more importantly, catching the unsolicited first sun rays of the whole planet for the new day. Unfortunately, little did we know that sunrise does not start at the South Island not until 08:00am. Yep, still not a fullblown, blindingly bright day at 8:00am. It is only just the start of the sun peeking through. And for us, it was not until around 09:30am when we finally had a decent amount of light to admire nature’s own artist.

our first peek of the sun at 09:00am

According to our proposed itinerary, about 50 minutes into our trip, we will drop by at Cromwell and eat breakfast there. Cromwell, is a little town at Otago known for its vineyards and stone-fruit orchards. However, as it was still too dark to even look at anything and all the stalls were still unsurprisingly close on this 0°C morning, we decided to just continue on our roadtrip. We then took a scenic, yet foggy (boohoo!) route along Lake Dunstan. Though it was nail-bitingly cold and still at the break of dawn, one can never deny the beauty of NZ’s roadside.

Icy Lake Dunstan at dawn. Our iPhone photos does not give it justice!

As the sun begun to rise, the beauty of New Zealand's country was starting to greet as merrily. One highlight of our early morning roadtrip were the pile of stones we saw stretched out just at the side of the road along Lindis Pass. We were hoping for some sort of divine, spiritual meaning behind these beautiful, almost sculptural, rock piles. However, one of the locals told us that stone piles has no significant meaning and was just probably started by some bored hitchikers. Nonetheless, can't help but aimlessly imagine a backpacker stacking stones for goodluck whilst wishing that his next car hitch will be with a stranger that can help him get to that place his been dreaming about.

"I was here."

Soon after, we had cuppa at Merino Country Cafe. A small café and gift shop at the small town of Omarama, famous for producing Merino Wool. Coffee costs us NZ$4.50 (roughly U$3.10) for a small cup of coffee. Quite pricey if you ask me, and premium quality coffee beans are clearly not what they are known for, to say the least. Frankly, we didn’t mind the price, but the register charged us 6 coffees when there were just 5 of us. We were already on the road when we realised about it. It was too late to go back and ask for refund. So yeah, ask for receipts. And check it! Because if you are like us, where every $$ counts, that $4.50 could have been your afternoon coffee.  Instead, you will now have to skip it to compensate for your lose. 

Enroute to Mt Aoraki you will pass through Lake Pukaki, the largest of NZ’s alpine lakes. And with its shimmering blue water, this certainly made NZ's lakeside postcard-worthy in every shot!

Lake Pukaki and the "coastal" road. Again just an iPhone shot, that does not give it justice!

The glimpse of the snowcapped Mt Cook, New Zealand's highest peak

Reaching Mt Cook Village, we decided to dropby at their i-Site Visitor Centre. Which we strongly suggest to everyone. Not only to get souvenirs and maps, but more importantly, to see the trail conditions for the day around Mt Cook Area. The village is located at the base of highest sky-scraping peaks of New Zealand, Aoraki/Mount Cook. (Check out one of the trails we hiked around Mt Cook Village on this post.)

artwork suspended amongst the ceiling beams at iSite

This proposed 3-hour drive took us about 4.5hours (one way) because we had to do a few stops for petrol and food. There are a lot of must-go sites and towns along this roadtrip. However, since we are doing this return, we opted not to go on all of it. I suggest that if you guys are planning to do this same trip, cut your whole itinerary to at least 2 days. Likewise, a roadtrip from Christchurch to Queenstown (or vice versa) split into 2-3 days will also be a good way to enjoy NZ's country drive. Or perhaps, do it around summer time. When days are longer and you can really stretch the time and squish it all in in a day. Otherwise you will be like us, arriving back at Queenstown at Day 2 and we still haven't seen this stunning place at daylight!

Lake Wakatipu, literally, a stone's throw away from our room.