Wanaka was made for autumn, everything looks beautiful; Cold mornings with incredible dawns - seeing the morning light reflecting on yellow leaves was amazing and the fog above the rivers around the big lake is magical.
It's just a bit more time consuming for Manual Focus if you're moving around a lot. I guess it really comes down to the real world practicality of it for each person. Nothing wrong with Manual Focus or Automatic Focus... For me it's AF 99% of the time - and with the new Eye Automatic Focus features even more reason to use it.