Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook

After only 1 night in Christchurch it was unfortunately time to move on as I am quickly running out of time in New Zealand (although my trip to the Air NZ office on Monday morning does mean that I am now leaving on 28th instead of 22nd so I can go to Bay of Islands and the Coromandel).

I headed inwards and mountainwards to Lake Tekapo a beautiful lake about 1.5 hours drive away from Mount Cook. I arrive in the early afternoon and wasted no time in dusting off my hiking boats and heading to do the Mount John Summit and Lakeshore walk (about 3.5 hour hike). Being me I managed to do it the wrong (and therefore harder) way round, starting with Lakeshore and ending up at the summit before going back in towards turn along a windy walking path going through lovely bush, at just about the time that all the bunny rabbits were coming out the play (stupid animals, as if I am not going to see them just because they are standing still. Saying that they are very good at standing still in shadows so have no cute bunny rabbit photos, poo!). The walk was great going past some amazing scenery, so that my camera was about as knackered as I was by the time I made it back to the hostel (where I had a dorm to myself, oh the luxury, although tonight it is going to be full but everyone seems really lovely).
The only negative point was that I have managed to develop a really annoying blister (to look at only small, but when you put boots on feels like it is the size of a golf ball and very sore), so today I had a very fetching but subtle limp!

After a quiet night and a very good sleep I got up this morning, jumped in the car and headed to Mount Cook village where I was booked to go out the see the Tasman Glacier, which has a glacial lake and lots of icebergs, near Mount Cook. Our boat trip was going out until 2.30 so I had a bit of time to explore the village, although really didn't wander as much as I normally would, do to blister issues. The boat trip out with Glacier Explorers was great. There were only 3 of us in our boat, as another big tour group had actually ended up being much smaller than booked, so they thought they would keep us apart from the Japanese group with the on-going translations and put me and a nice couple from near Auckland in our own boat. Our guide (Maggie, from Finchley, the Brits get everywhere) really knew her stuff and obviously is really passionate about what she does. I snapped lots of pictures of glaciers, Mountains in the background and of course the icebergs, that were melting and dripping water as we watched them. I even got to suck on a crystal of ice from one of the icebergs (it tasted like water, in case you were wondering). I will now be spending this evening editing down my photo collection, as I suspect that I got carried away and have about a dozen pictures of the same view. But that is the joy of digital.

Actually the excitement of the day started before I made it to Mount Cook, during the journey. There I was happily bombing along when I come over a hill and there is a huge stretch of road ahead of me and what looks like a house in the middle of the road. Now with my contact lenses I have pretty good vision, so this kind of worried me, I hadn't been driving that long so I couldn't be hallucinating. Sure enough, as I got closer I discovered that it was a house, fully built on a truck that was taking up both lanes. Cars coming the other way were having to drive off the road and wait for it to go past. Suffice it to say, houses do not move that fast (50km/hr seemed standard although once going down hill it must have hit 80 km/hr). Can't they just do an IKEA and take the pieces and build the stupid thing on location rather than carry it around fully built holding speed freaks like me up?

Anway, eventually the house pulled over and the lead car went ahead to stop traffic (one car) coming the other way, so that the now considerable tailback of coaches and cars could overtake. So once again I was bombing along through the most amazing scenery. 20 minutes later I see a flashing truck with "Be prepared to stop at request. Film crew ahead".. So I thought, here we go again. But they had to be the most elusive film crew as there wasn't a sign of them and I was free to keep bombing towards Mount Cook. On my return trip to Lake Tekapo, there was another film crew truck but it seemed to be packing up. I have not a clue where that film crew was, what it was filming or where it is now, but for all I know there could be some period drama with a white nissan discernable speeding along in the background. Doubtful but a thought that makes me smile.

Well tomorrow I bid farewell to Lake Tekapo and am heading to Franz Joseph Glacier. Will update after my Glacier hike on Thursday! Weather of course permitting, hopefully it will stay my friend.