Lake Tekapo

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The itinerary drawn up for me by Rona at the Westport i-Site called for me to stay overnight at Lake Tekapo. I had considered driving up to Mount Cook – the highest mountain in New Zealand at 3.755m (12,316') but decided that there would be little point in making the detour (it would be about 100 km round trip) in the time allowed.

As it turned out, I woke up early again and, realising I wasn't going to get back to sleep, decided to leave Queenstown early. It was still dark when I was driving past Wilson Bay on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, but I got what I think is a rather nice shot of the moon over the mountains: Pausing only to shake the dust of Queenstown off my feet, I headed back up to the main road where I would turn east and begin the journey back to Christchurch.

Arriving at Twizel (pronounced Twyzel), I stopped at the i-Site where the lady strongly recommended that I visit Mount Cook and, because I'd left Queenstown so early, it was now an option. She also raised the possibility of recapturing my lost helicopter trip as flights operate from this side of the mountains too. After some phoning around, she arranged a flight for me from Glentanner on the way to Mt. Cook. As airport car parks go, I've seen much worse: The flight itself was quite good fun, but it was difficult to take pictures from inside the helicopter. We did make a landing on the snow though: And I got a couple of nice pictures of some of the local scenery: Those last two are Lake Pukaki and Lake Tasman respectively.

Driving a little further up the road takes you to the village of Aoraki/Mount Cook (the Maori name means 'cloud piercer'): It's not got much in the way of alpine charm about it, but it's not too bad either.

Up behind the large hotel you can see, a short walking trail leads to a nice lookout point where you can look up to the mountain itself: Aoraki/Mt Cook is bang in the middle of that picture. In the “V” formed at its base between the two slopes without snow on them, you can just make out the bottom of the Hooker Glacier.

Leaving the resort, I turned off the main road for the only serious length of unsealed road I tackled on the trip. This one led along to the Lake Tasman car park from where you can walk up to look at the Tasman glacier. It doesn't look like much, but the ice is there all right. Under the rocky surface in the foreground is about 200m of ice – the rocky surface is only a couple of metres deep. The lake itself has been formed from melt-water being trapped behind the rocky debris at the foot of the glacier.

Bits of ice still break off the glacier and form icebergs on the lake: Where's Leonardo di Caprio when you need him?

It was getting dark by then so I headed back down the road to Lake Tekapo where I was still planning on staying overnight. In fact, I had an added incentive; the lady in the Twizel i-Site had booked me into an astronomy session at the Mt John observatory and it was promising to be a perfectly clear night.

The observatory on Mt John is part of the University of Canterbury although there are also a large number of scientists from a Japanese university and from other countries working there. The night tours are aimed at giving lay-people a very brief introduction to the various stars that are visible in the southern hemisphere – we got to look through several telescopes at nebulae, galaxies and planets, but it didn't really lend itself to photography. The only picture I took was this one of the moon just after it rose: and it's not all that good a photo, really. Still, it was a very interesting evening with enthusiastic and knowledgeable guides on hand to point things out and answer questions. They provided extra-warm jackets and free hot chocolate as well!

The next day dawned sunny and clear again. Because of a temperamental heater in the van, the rental company had suggested I stay at a camp site (at their expense) where I could plug into the mains in order to see if it was a problem with the heater or the batteries. This: is why I rented a van with on-board facilities. Parking up in a little row of other vans was not what I wanted at all. Still, it was only for one night and the site had a laundry which meant I could get everything washed (and dried in my on-board drying room!) before leaving NZ.

The lady in the Lake Tekapo i-Site arranged for me to take a boat trip out on to the lake which gave me enough time to visit this lovely little chapel: This is the Church of the Good Shepherd – a multi-denominational church built in 1935 to serve the people of the area. All the materials to build it were sourced from within 5 miles of the site, though the original roof shingles were later replaced with Welsh slate, and the pews are made of English oak.

The interior is deliberately simple and, behind the altar, a picture window was positioned to frame the surrounding mountains. The boat trip left from just outside the church, so I was able to leave the van in the car park there. It was just a small boat with the owner and three passengers, and we only headed out on to the lake for half an hour or so, but it was a beautiful day and we were surrounded by breathtaking scenery. Like this:

The astonishingly vivid turquoise/blue colour of the water is not a trick of the camera. If anything, it was even brighter than that picture suggests. The lake is fed by glacial melt-water which contains a quantity of “rock flour” - rock ground to a fine powder by the sheer weight of the ice. This “flour” sits in suspension in the lakes around here and creates the colour.

There was a lady in many layers of clothes doing guide duty at the church, which brought back several memories for me. We traded tourist stories while she told me about the place. She suggested strongly that I return to Mt John to see the view in daylight, so I did. And it was worth it.

The previous night, we had all been driven up in mini-buses from Lake Tekapo as it's not permitted for visitors to drive themselves after dark. The reason is quite simple, really – the headlights from the cars shine directly into one of the telescopes, which spoils the fun for the astronomers.

Click on this picture to read the sign by the road: When we reached this point in the mini-bus, our driver, as instructed killed the main lights and proceeded on side lights only. What none of us in the bus knew (or, at least, I certainly didn't) was quite how precarious the road is. I think I'm glad I didn't know. At one point on this road, I needed to change all the way down to 1st gear to get round one of the corners on the gradient.

This is a real, working observatory: but, hiding behind the university sign is a rather good café!

The view was, indeed, spectacular. The stretch of water you can just see behind the dome is Lake Alexandrina.

This is Lake Tekapo itself, with the town of the same name at the right (southern) end: On the door of one of the telescope domes we'd used the night before, I saw this little notice: One of the guides from the previous evening was at the observatory again, but I didn't realise it was him until he said something. There was absolutely no white light allowed from the moment we left the tour office in the village in order to help develop our night vision for star gazing so the guides used small, red torches to illuminate steps or things we had to see. This also meant that I had very little idea what any of them looked like, but I recognised his voice!

And then, with a rather flat, “homeward bound” feeling, it was time to leave the high country and head back down to Christchurch.