March 21 - 23

We hit the road and made our way inland to Lake Tekapo, after a couple of hours we began to climb into the mountain ranges until we reached an altitude of 720m above sea-level and the road dipped into a valley. As the trees parted we witnessed the breathtaking beauty of the lake, surrounded on each side by towering mountains and a milky turquoise color regardless of the weather (minerals in the water give it the natural blue hue) it is truly awe-inspiring. It's no exaggeration to say that we both let out a big 'wow!!' and had a massive smile on our faces as we pulled into our campsite overlooking the lake with all its beauty framed perfectly through the rear window of the camper.

The next day we decided to make the most of the landscape and walked first down to a tiny church on the waters edge called 'The Church of the Good Shepherd'. Together with the statue of a Collie dog that sits next to it (in honour of all the sheep-dogs in New Zealand, which must be superstars considering there are 45 million sheep here!) the two make up some of the most photographed things in the country and its easy to see why. We took plenty of photographs ourselves obviously.

After lunch we made our way up to the top of Mount John (never going to win a contest for coolest sounding mountain name) which overlooks the lake. The climb was really steep and we had stop a few times so Janine could 'take in the view' which was odd because mostly its obscured by trees until you get to the top. Once at the summit we sat in the cafe (it's not Everest alright, there's a cafe!) and warmed ourselves up with coffee and some of the most awesome lemon cake I've ever tasted! There's also an observatory at the top which claims to have the best views of the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere, but we decided against paying the ticket price and opted to star-gaze from back down in the camper instead.

Before dinner we made our way to the hot pools for a dip overlooking the lake and the mountains, it was a perfect way to end the day.

We were awakened at 3am by what can only be described as an air-raid siren which echoed throughout the entire valley. If, like me, you have never been awakened in the dead of night by an air-raid siren, let me tell you that its a scary experience! Especially when you have no idea what the siren is warning of, there's a huge hydro-electric dam further up the valley and you're in a country that has just had it's biggest earthquake in living memory! We put on some clothes and wandered around the campsite looking at other equally bemused and scared campers in their pyjamas! As it turns out, the siren is sounded to notify the towns volunteer fire service that they are needed. Although why they have to use such an archaic method that wakes everyone else up to do this I don't know (telephone, text message, tweet...this is 2011!). It was sort of like when the bell went in school and the teachers would say 'that bell is for me not for you'.