2025 New Zealand: January 2nd - Diamond Lake and Rocky Point

The wear and tear of doing so much hiking was showing on everyone. When I planned our trip to Wanaka the thought to myself was that to do the 10 mile Roy’s Peak Track. But a 10 mile 4300’ elevation gain hike today would have drawn everyone’s protest, and to be honest we woke up a bit too late for it anyway. We decided to do the DIamond Lakes/Rocky Point hike, which was fairly close and quite short.

We started the hike at 8:40am, when the parking lot was relatively empty. On the way to the parking lot, I noticed that the Roy’s Peak parking lot was already full, with cars spilling out onto the road. We got started in the relatively cool air, but once we got around Diamond Lake the climb started in earnest and we took off our jackets.

At the Wanaka Lookout, we finally saw sheep. On my first visit to New Zealand in 2000, one of the remarkable sights while hiking was sheep wandering the hills, but this was the only time we saw sheep on hiking trails. We also saw big jackrabbits below us. The view was truly fantastic. There weren’t even obtrusive large clouds blocking the views of the surrounding peaks, just enough fluffy clouds that lent atmosphere to the hike.

As we got higher, the views of Wanaka Lake got better and better, and Roy’s Peak looked bigger and taller. With a short hike, we took our time, taking plenty of photos and taking in every side trip or viewpoint in as we could. This hike was relatively exposed, but the day was also relatively cool, with both the climb and descent relatively steep but short. When we were all done it was time for lunch.

I followed the tripadvisor directions to the best rated restaurant in Wanaka, Big Fig. There was a long line but it moved relatively quickly. Bowen and Boen got different dishes while Xiaoqin and I shared one. The setup was that you’d order one meat and 3-5 vegetarian selections from a deli-like environment. The restaurant (and it seemed like every other restaurant did the same thing) charged an additional 15% to compensate the workers for working on a holiday. I enjoyed the food, but Xiaoqin was unimpressed. Both Bowen and Boen were also unimpressed.

After lunch, we went to a local gelato shop and bought some ice cream, but this time all of us were unimpressed. We walked along the lake shore where there were paddleboards and canoes and kayaks for hire, but none of the kids were interested. We’d have had to go back to fetch swim suits anyway or just live with getting wet if we fell in the water. Nearly everyone on the water looked like an rank beginner though. I felt like any of our kids would have outperformed nearly everyone on the water.

When we checked in the previous day, we saw an ad in the lobby for Hook Wanaka, a restaurant where they’d give you a rod so you could catch your own fish for dinner.  The receptionist had responded that the place was pretty good, but you had to go early. We decided that 2:00pm was early enough and drove there. The parking lot was pretty full, but when we walked in they had fishing rods almost immediately available for rental.

We paid for 2 fishing rods, and the boy renting them to us gave us a pointy tool to kill the fish when we pulled it out of the water, as well as buckets to place the fish and bait. $20 looked like a pretty good deal. They pointed us to a video showing us how to use the reel, but upon playing with it everything seemed straightforward. These were all Shimano fishing reels and had that quality Shimano feel to the action.

We went out to the lake and after a few tries hooked two Salmon in quick succession, which we thought was more than enough for dinner. Not bad for the first time—though the receptionist had assured us that we were guaranteed to catch the fish, we didn’t think it would happen so quickly! The restaurant had a “no throwback” policy, so any fish you caught had to be killed and eaten.

At the checkout counter, we realized that in addition to paying for the fishing rod, we also had to pay to get the fish prepared, and the cost was based on the weight of the fish caught, so the total bill came out to over $100. We had the fish prepared sashimi style for takeout, but due to the volume of orders there was at a 40 minute waiting period. So that was why we saw so many families sitting down and eating non-fish food at the restaurant. They were all waiting for their fish to be prepared takeout, but they were too hungry to wait the 40 minutes. Suddenly having lunch+ice cream before arriving at the restaurant didn’t seem like such a bad idea!

We sat down with a Chinese family from Auckland with two kids. The father had moved to Auckland for high school, and now they were on their summer break vacation. They shook their heads about the poor economy in New Zealand and the inflation, but remarked that we must have been feeling pretty good since the US dollar was high. I thought about trying to make them feel better by mentioning that our kids were subject to school shootings while theirs weren’t, but decided that wasn’t appropriate.

We went back to Alpine Junction, put the sashimi into the fridge, went out and bought salad and ice cream, and then had a shower and started the laundry. There was a huge amount of sashimi. One of the fish was 1 pound, and the other was 1.4 pounds. But it had been a while since we had Salmon sashimi so we ate it all up with no leftovers.

With that huge meal we had to do a post dinner walk. Fortunately it was quite cool at this point, and the walk was mostly flat. Clouds were building and the weather forecast for rain the next day seemed much more believable than in the morning.

We charged everything and went to bed. We had just two nights in New Zealand left!