We checked out our room in the morning and started our long road trip to Wanaka and then to Haast Pass from there.

There are two routes to reach Wanaka from Queenstown, while one is a straight highway road, the other one takes the scenic drive across the Crown range. The scenic drive was too good with winding roads and fabulous mountain views.

The landscape on this drive looked completely different with almost no vegetation on the mountains.

After some time, it turned cloudy and there comes the grey sky 🙂

We reached Wanaka, a resort town, located on the banks of Wanaka lake with views of snow-capped mountains. It is the gateway to the Mount Aspiring National Park, a wilderness of glaciers, beech forests and alpine lakes. We spent some time in Wanaka town and headed to Haast Pass, located on the west coast of New Zealand.

There are two glaciers Fox and Frans Josef two hours after Haast pass, but we decided to skip those on this trip, as it would be a long road trip and requires a lot of trekking from there to actually reach the glaciers. So, we decided to drive till Haast Pass to explore the other side of the South Island.

It was completely foggy for around 50kms that we couldn’t see a lake just beside the road.

After around 50kms of drive, the clouds cleared and we got to see the other side of Lake Wanaka.

Our first stop on this route was Blue pools, famous for its turquoise waters. It was a small pool and looked similar to the water in Bob’s Cove. This place is full of sand flies and we had to cover ourselves properly. I felt that this stop could have been avoided.

Our next stop was Fantail falls, followed by a huge waterfall called Thunder Creek waterfall.

We spent sometime there at these waterfalls and headed to Haast Pass.

While the road till Wanaka was completely in between mountains without any trees, the road to Haast Pass was a drive in a rainforest with lush green vegetation. This felt like a complete different country altogether. As we drove more towards the west, the mountains almost disappeared and we reached the sea level with farmlands.

We just got a quick view of the west coast and then we headed back on the same route to reach Wanaka by sunset time.

Finally, the Lake Hawea which disappeared in the clouds appeared to us on our return trip 🙂

We reached our stay at Wanaka by evening and got to know that our room got upgraded from a studio room to a one bed room apartment 🙂 After staying in single rooms for so long, the apartment felt like a huge mansion and we felt glad that we will stay there for two nights.