We stopped and stayed two nights at Lake Tekapo, if you like your places to be remote, star-full, stunningly scenic, warm, naturally colourful, full of friendly locals, shops that shut by dusk, this place is for you!

Lake Tekapo houses one of the world's largest starlight reserves, it has a classification that puts it in the only four in the world to have the darkest known skies known to man. Mt John observatory has telescopes that can scan up to 50 million stars on a clear night. It is one of few places that opens it's scientific facilities to the public. Simply gazing at the stars in the darkness from the Lakes edge, was out of this world. So it may come as no surprise that K witnessed her first shooting star here, closely followed by her second.

We decided to do the hour and a half walk up to the Mt John observatory. From there we had a superb view of the lake, Its aqua colour which is caused by fine glacial flour was suspended in the water with the reflection of sky. This coupled with the backdrop of snow peaked mountains made for that stunning scenery we mentioned earlier. If the views weren't enticing enough to make this trip, there's a cafe when you get to the observatory, hot chocolate and a lemon cake slice also made very yummy incentives to take the walk up. Extreme wind meant we got a free adrenaline junkie walk too!

There's a very quaint little church (church of the good shepherd) perched along the lakes edge. It's no wonder, what with its picturesque backdrop that people are attracted to it, to do their 'I do's'.