Activity Summary
Saturday 14th January - Day 135
Drive to Lake Tekapo
Mt Sunday / Edoras
Stargazing in a random lay by
Sunday 15th January - Day 136
Lake Tekapo walk
Lake Alexandrina
Church of the good shepherd
Swim in Lake Tekapo
Monday 16th January - Day 137
Tekapo hot springs
Summary
Lake Tekapo
The lake is beautiful and the campsite right next to it made it super easy to relax in it whenever we wanted. The pictures really do not do the blueness justice. Seemed like little else to do in the area but we didn’t mind that so much after the long drive and walking in Arthur’s pass with the continued trekking expected in Mt Cook so we were treating it as a chill location.
The night sky project here however was really cool. But if a struggle to make it past 11pm when it was properly dark given we are old and boring but it was totally worth it.
Accommodation
Lake Tekapo - Lakes Edge holiday park
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £14
Great holiday park right on the edge of the lake with all the facilities of a ‘luxury’ location we have come to desire. The kitchen was a bit carnage as it was pretty small for a lot of people but we escaped that by cooking on the bbq every night.
We have also never watched so much Nickelodeon than we did while staying here. The kids just loved it and we had very little say in the matter.
Diary
We had a big driving day to Lake Tekapo via Mt Sunday (solid 3.5hr detour) which Luke wanted to go to solely to see where Edoras in LOTR was filmed. Nicola could have taken it or left it given the ridiculous amount of time it added on to our journey but Luke was keen so we took off early that morning. Not that we were unhappy to get up and out of our campsite.
First stop of course was the Arthur’s pass toilets before properly heading on the road of course.
The journey down to Mt Sunday was pretty easy bar the last 30 minutes which was solely on aggressive gravel. We had all of our possessions in Chopper so he was hanging mighty low and with the ridged road, uneven levels, stones and dust we honestly didn’t think he would make it without consequence. Had we known it was going to be like this we probably wouldn’t have attempted it.
However we did make it there and back without problem although it was pretty stressful.
To add to that stress it turned out that coach loads of people are shipped from Christchurch to the location. We thought this would be a pain once we got to the top of Mt Sunday but it turns out they only stop at the entrance to the mountain. This in itself caused more problems as they ended up blocking the 1 person capable suspension bridge across the river to the start of our walk, made more annoying as they stopped to selfie literally nothing but their mugs on a bridge and a river (there are fucking plenty of these everywhere) and the thing they came to see in Edoras not being in their shot.
Nicola, who can’t stand queuing for nonsensical shit, subsequently lost her shit and went very unbritish in forcing her way onto the 1 man bridge, ruining an old dude's selfie shot and in turn allowed Luke to follow quickly afterwards by stopping traffic on the other side. Lovely work on her part.
We were then able to start the short walk up to Edoras which was mainly through a cow grazing field but the top was absolutely excellent. We were the only ones up there at first so got plenty of time to take in the peace, laugh at the old biddies on a terrible tour and then have some lunch. Very few people bothered to make the journey to the top and the only people doing it were those that had driven of their own accord.
Once back down at the bridge the old biddies had departed on their regimented tour schedule so it was all a lot calmer, then we took off down to Lake Tekapo.
We arrived at the campsite a good 7 or 8 hours after we had left Arthur’s Pass so naturally we’re pretty tired. Fortunately the campsite is very comfortable so we pitched up and hid away in the TV room all evening bar making use of the BBQ. Luke cracked open his bottle of Pinot noir and had an evening of writing the blog, drinking wine and watching Nickelodeon which was all a bit weird.
Somehow we managed to stay awake to 10.30 so given the area is a dark sky reserve, where all nonessential lights are required to be turned off to protect the night sky, we got in the car and tried to drive over to the St John’s Observatory for a view. The road however is private, and while it was possible to park up and walk to the top of the hill we weren’t sure so continued driving on and found a secluded spot where one of the walking tracks started.
Once here we laid out the roll mats, sleeping bags and pillows and got comfy to watch the sky. It was stunning but we were a little early for it to get fully dark so had to wait a while and there was still a fair amount of patchy cloud cover. But we made the most of it before driving back to the campsite at about midnight.
We had a slow start to the morning which consisted of food shopping, washing and cooking a fairly disappointing oven pizza but it tickled a craving we had had enough for Luke to shut up about it.
We spent the early afternoon driving / walking around the nearby area. We first stopped off for a lake Tekapo walk that was a bit further along from the campsite which was alright but Luke was struggling pretty badly with hay fever and we had similar views from the campsite.
Next we drove to Lake Alexandrina which was where the cheap campsite was and were pretty glad we didn’t stay there. Lake Tekapo is much nicer.
Lastly we went over to the Church of the good shepherd which Luke thought was going to be an absolute waste of time. It turned out to be the first church he has ever liked. That said it doesn’t look overly churchy, just a small quaint looking outhouse with absolutely stunning views all around. Luke said if he had to get married in a church, this is the badger.
Now having run out of activities (and not really bothered about doing anything else) we relaxed and had a swim in Lake Tekapo.
Luke continued to suffer from hay fever so came up with a new hay fever invention, patent pending. It did actually work.
The rest of the evening again was BBQ and Nickelodeon marathons with Pinot noir. We failed to stay awake for stargazing the rest of the time we were in Tekapo.
We continued with our slow and lazy starts to the day and half started gearing up for the St John’s observatory hike.
It was, however, absolutely roasting outside and neither of us fancied it that much for views we had already in large part seen so we sacked it off and decided on the Tekapo hot springs (hoping they had a cold plunge pool).
The hot pools were not very expensive to get into (the slide and bouncy castle on offer looked terrible) and sadly they didn’t have a cold plunge pool but we made do with the various hot bodies of water they had. It was a little annoying with all the kids running around so we ended up spending most of our time in the hottest ‘adult only’ pool which resulted in draining all the water in our bodies and we needed to leave.
As always when we find a rhythm in a comfortable place, we did exactly the same as the previous nights. Despite our lives being controlled chaos we do find ourselves finding rhythms and creature comforts so sticking to them when we can.
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