Day 8: Lake Tekapo

Today started off a little cool and with a brief light sprinkle after breakfast. It was overcast, but we wanted to chance getting a good view from the top of Mount John. We headed out pretty early on a hike up to the top of Mount John, with a height of over 1000m. Our route took us along Lake Tekapo which had low clouds obscuring the snow-capped mountains of the Southern Alps.

Despite the clouds it was a very beautiful “tramp” (what the locals call a hike) and we took the walk at a slow pace, stopping to enjoy the vistas often. Along the hike we saw sheep, rabbits, and some really odd little birds that would fly very high flapping their wings incredibly fast while singing songs. They reminded Matt of police helicopters because they would just sort of hover around while letting out siren-ish bird song. Plus, we also spotted what we think was a chukar amongst the rocks, but it took off before Pam could get a good look at it.

After about two hours of hiking we made it to the top of the mountain which has an observatory run by the Canterbury University in Christchurch. This particular region is one of the dark sky reserves, and has some of the darkest skies in the world. There is also a nice little café at the top of the mountain with huge glass windows and good coffee. Although very windy, the views were spectacular and Matt tried his hand at some time lapse photography. We had an excellent view of the Makenzie Basin (where a majority of the world’s merino wool is produced), plus the Southern Alps started to peak out from behind the clouds as we were getting ready to leave.

After making our descent from the mountain we made our way into town and found a great cheap restaurant called the Doughboy Bakery, we got good sized Bacon Burgers (Matt also got egg), Chips (fries), and a bottle of water for under $18NZ which is a steal in this little town in our opinion. The burgers were good and had pickled beets instead of pickles, and ham instead of bacon, which was interesting. Although, if you wanted ketchup for those fries, you’d have to pay extra. Weird.

With full stomachs we headed to the much anticipated hot pools. Unfortunately we may have been spoiled by our favorite natural hot springs back in the states, particularly Lava Hot Springs in Idaho. Lake Tekapo Hot Springs has three large sitting pools that are warmed to 36C, 38C, 40C. We found that the first two pools were not hot enough for us, and the final pool was warm, but definitely not very hot. However the low temperatures did allow us to stay in for a long time. We lounged around for as long as we could (about 2.5 hours) and headed back to camp.

We took advantage of the laundry facilities in the near-empty holiday park (the holiday weekend is over, the locals have returned home, and the park has about a third of the campers in it now), and are now charging all of our electronics. Dinner will be a concoction of noodles and soup, and we’re anticipating the possibility of some stargazing happening tonight assuming the skies stay clear. The activity of the day (hiking and walking around, plus the soak in the hot water) seems to have helped the sore knees, and we’ll be on our way tomorrow, toward Mt. Cook.

Hiking along the shore of Lake Tekapo

Looking across Lake Tekapo

Pam on top of Mt. John

One of the telescopes on top of Mt. John

Lone kayaker on Lake Tekapo with Southern Alps in the background