Since we arrived so late into Lake Hawea it was difficult to see exactly how beautiful this place really was. Although, it didn’t take us long to discover its beauty. The Holiday park was practically empty and laid out in a fairly spacious way. The views right from the lake were absolutely incredible. Not only were the views and atmosphere of the park stunning, it was well worth the money. The kids were excited to try out the free scooters they had on offer, which really helped release some energy as the past few days had involved a big portion of travel.

The excitement didn’t stop here as we were heading straight to Puzzling World in Wanaka, which was only about 20 minutes away. Puzzling World was a definite must stop for us. When we first arrived, we went straight into the illusion rooms. This is a great experience for kids of any age.

The kids had to quickly go to the toilet, which were a little public. Well not really, however as obvious as these fake toilets are there were still signs saying not to really use them as toilets. I guess they must have had some very confused tourists in the past. The building that was on a 15 degree slope was good fun to walk through and really messed with your sense of balance. The kids loved going “up” in the chair.

By far the best part of the attraction was the giant maze. Before we had left, I spoke with my brother who had done the maze and said it would take about an hour. I just thought he wasn’t very good at mazes. Surprisingly, he was right. The maze was pretty difficult. There were two ways to do the maze. The first was just to get to each tower. The second, and more difficult, was to do the towers in a particular order. We, of course, decided to do the second option. The first three towers were reasonably easy and probably only took us 45 minutes. The last red tower almost broke us. In the end we had to bribe the kids with toys from the gift shop to complete it.

We did actually complete the challenge and the relief from everyone as we found the way to the red tower, was almost destroyed when we realised we still had to find the exit. We managed to find the exit fairly quickly which was good.

We went through the illusion rooms for a second time and had a quick coffee and hot chocolates. After looking at the weather report we saw that it might snow in Queenstown on Saturday, so we decided to make it to Queenstown in hope for some snow. Fingers crossed.