RV Exchange Travel Destination - New Zealand - Best Of The Best Around Wanaka
Staying Over
In the Wanaka/Hawea area there are many places to park up. These vary from undeveloped locations with only toilets and running water, to holiday parks with all the mod cons.
Glendhu Bay Motor Camp on the western shores of Lake Wanaka, about 12km from the town, stretches 1.5km along the waterfront and has around 500 sites – not all of them powered. The facilities are tired but it’s a popular locality with local families, and in the Christmas holidays it’s jam-packed.
Closer to Wanaka are the Top Ten Wanaka Holiday Park and Pleasant Lodge Holiday Park, and on the western edge of town the peaceful Aspiring Campervan Park has excellent facilities and is especially set up for campervans. A little further afield are the Lake Hawea Holiday Park, set among shady trees beside between the lake and SH6, and The Outlet Motor Camp, which is adjacent to the Clutha River and is favoured by anglers and boaties.
There’s a DoC camping site at Albert Town Reserve on the north side of the bridge over the Clutha River on both sides of the highway. At Boundary Creek near the head of Lake Wanaka, where the creek meets the lake, is another camping area also run by DoC and equipped with toilets and barbecue.
Walking
Apart from skiing, walking is one of the most popular forms of recreation in the area.
There’s a whole network of easy to extremely difficult walkways, but most popular are: the Mt Iron Track, which leads to a rocky knoll with great views from its summit. It begins two kilometres from town and takes around one and a half hours. The 20-minute Eely Point Walk follows the lakeshore to pass the marina to a sheltered boating area. Continue around five minutes to Bremner Bay, a popular swimming spot.
A well-formed shoreline track links Bremner Bay to Beacon Point, with great views of the lake and its mountains along the way. The Outlet Track starts at the western end of Roys Bay and follows along the western shore, past Rippon Vineyard to end at a small beach. The views are superb.
For toughies, a popular track is Roys Peak, which takes around six hours but affords amazing views from its 1578-metre summit. It leads off the Mt Aspiring road, crosses private pastoral land and climbs through alpine tussock. Take warm clothes. The Rocky Hill Summit Track leaves from the Diamond Lake Conservation Area 12km from Wanaka on Mt Aspiring Road.
Views from the top are probably worth the puff, but the track is steep and slippery in parts and not recommended in the winter. There is a lower level circuit, which takes around two hours. The Little Criffel track is for fit, experienced walkers only as it is unformed in parts. It begins on Cardrona Valley Road, 12km from the town.
Activities
If the weather doesn’t favour the outdoors, the long-established Puzzling World is entertaining – it’s crooked towers easily recognisable on the way into Wanaka from Queenstown. The theme here is wildly eccentric. The clock ticks backwards, the flat pathway creates the illusion of steps, the ceiling in the café is a giant kaleidoscope, and the public toilets confuse the brain with their dioramas. The Illusions Room will further confound and, as if this were not enough, your sense of direction in the Great Maze with its 1.5 kilometres of intertwining passages.
Another quirky place is Cinema Paradiso, a small classic theatre where people can watch a movie from the comfort of old sofas or one of the three seats in a Morris Minor. An on-site café serves delicious meals during the movie and home-made biscuits at half time. There are two local golf courses. The Wanaka Golf Course close to the centre of town on Ballantyne Road is set among mature trees with views of the mountains and lake that on a fine day are so awe-inspiring they can put you off your swing. West of Hawea next to the Hawea River is a pleasant nine-hole course which, not surprisingly, is the Hawea Golf Course.
There is another nine-hole golf course with a difference at Rippon Vineyard and Winery on Mt Aspiring Road. The golf cross course played with egg- shaped balls won’t improve your golf, but the frustration justifies a glass (or whole bottle) of wine at the end of the two hours. The 15-hectare vineyard slopes down towards a fringe of poplar trees on the lake’s edge. No fruit is bought in from outside the property.
If the golf and the wine don’t go to your head, then the view over the lake, the mountains and Ruby Island certainly will. Rippon is arguably the most scenic vineyard in the country.
The small cruise boats of Lake Wanaka Cruises and Eco Wanaka Adventures ply the water to Mou Waho and Stevenson Islands. Apart from the scenic aspects of the lake and mountains, both islands have walking tracks to smaller lakes and populations of weka and other birds. There are also several rafting, jet boating and canoeing trips on the Clutha, which is the largest river in New Zealand. For anyone after a more serene water-born experience, there are also canoes for hire along the lake frontage in town.
On the way into Wanaka from Cardrona Valley, several trucks and buses with enormous wheels catch the eye. This is Cardrona Adventure Park, where visitors can have a more boisterous experience. A ride or drive in a monster truck is not for the faint hearted, but there are also quad bikes, go-carts and off-road racing cars that look a bit more user friendly.
Drives
Roads lead out from Wanaka in four main directions. The road along the Cardrona Valley and over the tussock-dimpled Crown Range is spectacular for its huge vistas over the Wanaka and the Wakatipu basins, however it’s not recommended for towing vehicles.
The road to Cromwell is through flat table lands and the towns of Luggate and Tarras. Luggate was once a mining centre for alluvial diggings. You have to use a lot of imagination to see that now, but the hotel (1863), old flourmill and several small stone houses remain. A spectacular road winds along the western side of the lake and up Mt Aspiring. It is sealed as far as the turn off to Treble Cone ski field and a dirt road from there, with some tight corners.
The best view of Mt Aspiring is from Glendhu Bay, but you need to drive higher up to get a glimpse of the Rob Roy glacier. The most dramatic drive though, is through Albert Town and up the west side of the stunning Lake Hawea, a vast stretch of glassy water held between the rough-hewn soaring mountains and a wide translucent sky.
Looking back
Along the walkway beside the lake frontage of Wanaka township you will see people with their heads down as if they are looking for spiders. The Walkway is lined with tiles – 2000 of them – each representing a year and engraved with historic local and world events that happened on the day. It might be as simple as the day steel pen nibs were invented, or as grand as the conquest of Peru. In half an hour I collected enough historical facts to be in with a win on a quiz show.
In the Cardrona Valley there is, of course, that distinctive hotel of the gold rush days, made famous by the advertising campaign for Speights Brewery. The Cardrona Hotel had a major do-up in 2002, which has kept something of the ambience of the period, albeit rather forced. The restaurant and bar display a few historic items; there is a large, comforting schist fireplace in the restaurant and the original bar. Jim Paterson, publican for many years from 1926, would not serve women, and any man driving the Crown Range would be rationed to one beer – two if they were heading for Wanaka. It is hard to visualise the thriving Cardrona of 1865-1880s. Only the hotel, the town hall and church remain.
The Transport and Toy Museum occupies a 16-acre area at the Wanaka Airport. It is a ramshackle, un-restored but interesting collection comprising 30,000 items, which is a bit daunting. There are huge lanes of toys – teddy bears, clockwork and battery-powered toys, pedal cars, moneyboxes, and dolls. Most of them were from the 1950s and ‘60s, but I noted the 1924 McLaughlin Buick Limousine, one of only four ever built. There’s a shed full of fire engines and trucks, another of old aeroplanes and cars, and in the yard, diggers, bulldozers, a traction engine and two old amoured tanks.
Just 400m away is the New Zealand Fighter Pilot’s Museum, an astonishing collection, the seeds of which were sown when Tim Wallis bought a North American Mustang P-51 in 1984. As much as Mt Aspiring, the museum has put Wanaka on the tourist circuit. Apart from the restored static and flyable fighters of the Alpine Fighter Collection, there are photographic boards covering the history of the RNZAF and the New Zealand squadrons of the RAF, and information on life as a fighter pilot with personal stories, medals and memorabilia. There are biographies and photos of NZ Aces in WWI and WWII, and an excellent audiovisual presentation. Six multi-player flight simulators will even put you in the cockpit.
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