Wanaka

Daniel and I took a day trip from Queenstown to a little town called Wanaka which is right on Lake Wanaka. We decided to take a more "direct" and quicker route than the main highways and basically did zig zags through mountains for 30 minutes and landed in the serene Wanaka. We had a picnic lunch by the lake and then went to do a hike nearby called Roy's Peak. We had heard that this hike would give us great views of the lake and then an awesome 360 view from the top. We found this hike to be very uphill in the first 30 minutes, but we kept going only to find that it was truly 2.5 hours uphill the entire way. It was a beautiful day and the whole way up we were able to see Lake Wanaka. There were also a lot of sheep on and next to the trail. As we got higher we were able to see more of the lake and also more of the mountain ranges behind the lake. Eventually we started to get views of the snow capped mountains of the Mount Aspiring National Park. It was so beautiful. We kept thinking how it kept getting prettier the higher we went and also how how is this actually taking us! The views from the top were incredible, and we got many pictures of Mount Aspiring. It's the tallest of the snow capped peaks in the pictures.

We made the long way back down to the car and then stopped back by the lake to see it around sunset. We then made the curvy drive back to Queenstown where we cooked dinner at our hostel. It was an awesome day to hike with Daniel in NZ!