What a puzzling day

Bruce and Candy had recommended that we visit a place called Puzzling World when we were in Wanaka, so with it looking like it'd be a rainy day we headed their this morning. It offers two sections; a great maze and illusion rooms. As the rain was holding off we decided to do the great maze first because it is outside and uncovered. We opted for the harder version which was to reach all the corner towers in the order of yellow, green, blue, red before heading to the finish point in the centre. We had a great time getting totally lost and trying to find our way. Each tower felt like such an achievement and I think we completed in quite a good time. We were advised to visit the toilets whether we needed them or not to see quite a cool illusion. It played on perspective to show men sat on Roman style toilets. I spent quite a while lining myself up to get the perfect photo that makes the scene look right. We then entered the illusion room section of the place which initially had amazing hologram pictures that change and pop out as you walk past them. It was a shame how many people just walked on through without spending time seeing all the different images of one picture by moving around. The next room was a tilted house at a 15 degree angle. You felt rather off balance trying to walk your way around. It's amazing how your mind then believes things that are at the true horizontal really aren't. The best part was watching a pool table ball seemingly roll uphill when in reality the table is angled slightly downwards but when you are slanted it really looks as if the table is going uphill. There was a room full of inverted faces that really looks as if they are 3D towards you when you face them and as you move across the room the faces appear to turn and follow you. It's rather creepy but such a cool illusion. It's amazing how playing with angles can really alter your perception. This was shown in a room when you viewed it from a side window and it looks perfectly straight and normal however the person standing on the left will be massive and touching the ceiling and the person down on the right will appear tiny. It's only when you walk around and into the room do you see how playing with lines and patterns for a certain view point in mind really tricks your mind. Unfortunately there wasn't anyone we could ask for a photo of us in this room which was a shame but I'm sure we won't forget about it anytime soon. After fully amazing ourselves we headed back to the main area where they had about hundred different small puzzles to try and complete. I managed a couple but Nick was really stumped on one where you had to remove the string from the puzzle. He went to the toilet and one of the attendants came and took his puzzle. I told him he was still doing it but he took it anyway and said he wanted to show someone it. It was rather rude and I didn't get a nice vibe from him. Because of that we didn't ask how to remove the string from the puzzle so I guess we will never know. We were feeling rather low about how cold it was so made the decision to stay a second night in the paid campsite so we can have a heater on and nice showers again. After booking that we looked around the very limited high street that Wanaka has to offer before returning back to the campsite to spend another evening in the communal area talking to our Irish friends. We are so glad we came back because within an hour or so the wind was as furious as the rain.Read more