Kayaking on Lake Wanaka

So, as mentioned in my earlier post. We missed our bus from Queenstown to lake Wanaka by standing at the drop off place rather then the pick up. 

Luckily for us lake wanaka is only an hour from Queenstown, so we knew we'd somehow be able to get there easily. The risky thing was that we needed to be at the lake for 1pm. I had booked a kayak hire for 1pm cheap on the book me website. 

We went into mcdonalds to use the wifi and search for a possible bus option and soon realised we'd just missed the connect bus and the next one was at 3pm. This meant we would miss our kayaking:( or we could try and hitch hike our way there. (very popular thing in NZ, you see loads of backpackers standing on the side of roads waiting for a ride to stop)

We decided to leave mcdonalds and try our luck at a travel agents. Then Cj, spots the connect bus stop man just outside. We asked him for advice and he told us the bus literally just left for wanaka and that he can try and stop it for us. Luckily for us, he managed to get the mini van to stop up the road and wait for us. We were willing to pay to get the bus but we were a bit worried about how much it was going to cost out of our weekly budget. It turned out it was only $30, which wasn't too bad considering he stopped the bus for us and wanaka was an hour away. We hopped on another bus for free to take us to where the mini van was waiting for us. Then our journey begun only an hour behind schedule.

We arrived in lake Wanaka to see its a very small town that literally just circles half the lake (the lake is huge). Its again very pretty though and the surrounding mountains are a lot closer then in queenstown so we can see more real scale. 

We dropped our bags off at the hostel as it was too early to check in to our dorm room. We were staying at the YHA purple cow. We knew YHA (youth hostel association accredited) hostels had a good reputation and were supposed to be very nice but we have not yet stayed in one. In Australia they were always the most expensive hostels. This hostel was the poshest we've stayed in so far. The kitchen was big, convenient and very clean. The lounge area had a huge window looking over the mountains and there was a TV room playing movies in the evenings. 

We had lunch and made our way to the lake. We found the wanaka kayak marquee and got kitted into a life jacket and a little lesson on the kayak (more for Cj as he had pedals to steer the kayak with, which we haven't come across in a kayak before, posh kayak!) i originally only booked an our on book me for about £8 each (instead of £16) but looking at the size of this lake, we decided to book an extra hour as it takes an hour to get to the island we wanted to kayak to. 

And we're off. Paddling our way to the island in the middle. It was a hot sunny day so perfect weather to be in a freezing fresh water lake. I'll admit that Cj and his muscles got us to the island. I was too busy playing with the go pro to get on the paddles as much as i should have. But on the way back i put some arm work into it. We stopped at the island and hopped off the kayak (trying not to capsize in the process) the water was freezing so i got back in the kayak. 

We made it back to the beach in time for the end of our 2 hour session. We actually accidentally managed to get that 2nd hour free. It was a different guy that check us back on to land and he didn't ask for the extra payment and we forgot to mention it as we paid online with book me. Oops!

We headed back to our hostel to check in to our room. As i mentioned before, YHA hostels are very nice and we where gutted we were only staying in lake wanaka for 1 night. Our room was very posh, it had an en suite bathroom and a kitchenette and modern bunk beds. The TV room had 8mile movie on at 8pm so after our dodgy microwave dinner that we picked up in the supermarket we watch that film with a few others from the hostel. 

It was an early night ready for another early morning bus to Franz Joseph.