After weighing up the options we decided Puzzling World was the best place to occupy our time in Wanaka. Gary, Mike and I didn’t mind so it was up to Conor and he wanted to go so we did (inside joke). Another glorious day greeted us outside with temperatures in the high 20’s. After a 30 minute walk we saw the leaning tower of Wanaka outside which provided me with the chance for camera trickery to create many photo opportunities.
Puzzling world is made up of a Fence Maze and Illusion rooms. The Maze has 4 towers, one in each corner, which one has to figure out their way to. To be honest the maze was pretty shite!! It wasn’t our can of coke coupled by the fact we couldn’t find our way to any of the towers, we left after 10mins. We hoped the illusion rooms would hold more interest to us.
The first illusion you encounter on entering is a glowing sculpted concave face of Albert Einstein which follows you no matter where you go! Weird! The rest of the room is made up of varying holographic pictures each creating different and fun illusions. I had a gun pointed at my face! The next room was a circular hall of 6 famous faces (Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela to name a few) all in the same style as the earlier Einstein. Each face follows you around the room and it’s not just their eyes their whole face turns! Really cool! Not for the first time in my life all eyes were on me!!
The next room was to create an unbalanced centre of gravity effect. So the floor was at an angle, basically a steep slope yet the apparatuses in the room would work against the slope hence creating a weird illusion of conflicting levels of gravity. So one example is a pool table which looks perfectly square and flush (or plum as the auld lad would put it) yet every ball only goes in one pocket! Hard to explain and can only be comprehended by actually seeing it hence why they are called optical illusions not verbal illusions! The final major room of note was a perspective of size illusion where I would stand in one corner of a room and look like a giant compared to Gary who is in another corner of the same room, midget like. Illusions like this were used on The Lord of the Rings film for the hobbits. So we left Puzzling World in awe of the illusions and bitching about the so called Great Maze! We had to head back to the accommodation and gather our bags as we headed onto the next stop on our journey, Queenstown. For the thrill seeker and adrenaline hunter, it’s the capital of New Zealand and the home of the BUNGY.
Queenstown on 1st impressions seems young, vibrant, touristy, busy, buzzing and quite pretty. It’s a town that is thronged with backpackers all after the same thing the Bungi. If you can’t build yourself up to do the Bungi there is plenty other options like a Canyon Swing, Skydive, Jetboating, Paragliding and many others to suit everyone’s idea of a thrill. The town has zero history to it and its purpose is to serve the thrill seeking backpacker and it knows it. The town is made up of restaurants, cafes and store upon store of adventure agencies selling and advertising their answer to the backpackers wants. But the funny thing is amongst all this commercialism and money money, Queenstown is set on a beautiful lake and located in the middle of beautiful mountains and hills. It manages to maintain this charm amongst all the Bungy crusaders, chickens and champions.
That evening I was invited to accompany my cousin Sarah and her mister Robert in their campervan for dinner, a chat and a few drinks. Sarah and Rob are in NZ for 2 weeks doing a bit of sightseeing and relaxing. I had a lovely meal cooked by Sarah and shared some chit chat and banter till the wee hours of the morning. Great to catch up, get the news from home and be amongst family again.
A Cuna Ma Thata,
Tom
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