Wanaka, Puzzling World and great food (even Fat Duck)

Having finished our visit to the Sounds that are really Fjords, we again head inland and, we hope, away from the sandflies...also now known as the mini black spawns from hell.

We stop for lunch at The Fat Duck. Keen followers of Foodivore will recognise this as a Grail Destination, but wonder how it fits with a trip to New Zealand. It turns out that an enterprising cafe in Te Anau has named itself Fat Duck, and we lunched there. We doubt that Heston was in the kitchen, but both the steak and pork belly were decent nevertheless.

The score so far

The real Fat Duck 2, Foodivore 0


We arrive at Lake Wanaka with perfect blue skies and glistening waters. We stay in a beautiful lakeside park in Glendhu. The map informs us and other Lord of the Rings nerds that just across the glassy waters, in the mountains we can see beyond, was the filming location of "rugged country south of Rivendell".

Wanaka is also home to Puzzling World. We had low expectations but were pleasantly surprised. They have a 3D maze which just means the maze is over multiple levels with many bridges taking you in confusing directions. The aim is to reach the four towers in each corner, though just as difficult is finding the exit. We have to admit to eventually taking a "quick" exit route, but not until we'd fulfilled the objective of finding all four towers

Puzzling World also had "illusion" rooms. Once again expectations were low but exceeded. The hightlights were a room where everything including the floor is crooked, it leaves you feeling quite disoriented. Water appears to flow upwards and all perspective is skewed. The other is difficult to describe, pictured below. You walk around the room with an eye covered, it is a wall full of faces that appears to follow you around the room.

Having worked up an appetite at Puzzling World we track down lunch. We find a place upstairs, overlooking Lake Wanaka, named Alivate. We highly recommend it: the "surf and turf" was a perfectly rare steak with proscuito wrapped scallops and tempura prawns, with the prawns rather dramatically presented. The venison with dukkah was delicious, and matched with an exceptionally fine Otago pinot noir (Tarras "The Steppes" 2009, for the trainspotters).

Following lunch we hit the road and head to the the west coast, via a fruitless (pun intended) search for the Tarras had with lunch.

Beautiful sights along the way, on a perfect autumn afternoon.

We discover the so called "freedom" camping isn't that free. The sun was setting and every nice place we fnd along the way to stop informs us "no camping". We finally find somewhere we're allowed to stop with dramatic views over the coastline, there is probably a reason the spot hasn't snapped up already...we appeared to be outnumbered, Tracey and Andrew to 9,999,001 sandflies. Having fed a few more of the vampiritic hell spawn, we decide it's overpopulated and move further down the road. By this time it's getting dark and the windy roads around mountainous sea cliffs provide little opportunity to pullover. We settle for a boatramp next to a lake...and the road. After a bit of wine and a beautiful salmon omelette we cook for dinner, we decide it might be sensible to move out of the boat ramp for fear of an eager fisherman knocking at the door at 5am. We awake to the gentle sound of lake wildlife and road traffic, we have a bit to learn about freedom camping.