We decided to start the day slowly and wanted to explore Wanaka town.

Our original plan was to go on Rob Roy Glacier track near Wanaka. We got to know that the road to Rob Roy track has some gravel road in between and that we are not supposed to drive our car on that route. The other tracks that are left are Rob’s track and Mt.Iron Summit, both of which are difficult ones and we didn’t want to go on those. So, we gave up on all our plans and decided to take the day at a slow pace.

We picked the famous photo points around Wanaka and wanted to just enjoy the drive to all those places.

Our first photo stop was Glendhu Bay Lookout, renowned for its reflections and views to the stunning peak of Mt Aspiring. The drive to this place was equally beautiful.

After reaching the lookout point, we got an idea of just driving towards Rob Roy Glacier track till the gravel road starts, so that we don’t miss that part of the drive at least, if not for the complete track.

That stretch of road trip felt like a safari. We spotted a bunch of deers on our way, which ran swiftly. We wondered if there were any predators for them in New Zealand, as we were not aware of any wild animals in Australia continent. If there are none, then we might have seen the luckiest deers ever.

We reached the end of the paved road at Treble Cone Ski resort, the largest ski resort in the South Island of NZ.

On our return trip, we were surrounded by a big herd of sheep running towards us and we had to stop in the middle of the road and wait for them to cross. We realized that the owner of the sheep used a dog to chase them back to their place, without which they go around randomly.

Though we saw many sheep earlier all around New Zealand, this was our first close encounter, the sheep looked heavier than what we expected.

We headed back to Lake Wanaka and stopped at a colorful park on the way which looked extremely picturesque with autumn colors.

Our next photo stop was “That Wanaka Tree”, the most photographed tree of New Zealand 🙂 I didn’t quite understand when I initially read about it, on why the tree was named so and what was so special about it. I immediately fell in love with the beautiful tree standing alone in the lake surrounded by mountains.

It was our trek day and we didn’t want to miss out on that and we decided to take an easy Waterfall Creek Track along the lakefront, starting from That Wanaka Tree to the waterfall creek.

We reached the Waterfall Creek after around 30mins, from where we got to view a small island in the lake, called Ruby Island.

We came back along the same track to the town, took a small lunch break and headed to our next photo stop, Lake Hawea Dam, located on the other side of Wanaka. The Hawea lake was raised artificially by 60 feet to store more water for increased hydroelectric power generation down the Clutha River.

Lastly, we wanted to try our luck with sunset, but the clouds didn’t favor us.

It was a proper relaxing day in the cute little Wanaka town and a much needed break in the middle of our trip 🙂