Yesterday afternoon we arrived in Tekapo a small village next to the lake, our hostel is right on the waterfront and we open the patio doors in our room to an awesome view. We took a walk up into the village to pick up some shopping, a combination of healthy muesli, eggs and beans on toast and pasta! Touch wood so far we have had some brilliant weather with temperatures of 28 degrees minus the 94% humidity that we had in Fiji so we sat out and enjoyed the late evening sun.

Today we had a lay in before taking on a three hour hike up to Mount John which has a famous star gazing observatory but it also boasts fantastic views over the lake and mountains around. We decided on taking the one hour route up to the summit and the longer track back, I think we did it the right way around. The walk up was very steep and directly to the summit, Lake Tekapo is glacier water which gives it that awesome blue colour. When you see these lakes in photographs you always think they are just good with lighting or have been edited a little but I can assure you it is a perfect blue! We spent quite a while at the top looking from the north and south view points and we stopped at the café for a banana smoothie. The route down took us the opposite direction to village and snaked down to the cliff edge, the closer you got to the water the better it looked! Four hours later we were back at our hostel with tired legs and having really enjoyed one of our best days yet, this views of this place are definitely up in the top few. The weather was warm today but windy and the track meant wearing walking boots and shorts and I seem to have caught the sun and have nice boot lines across my ankles and Olof's face is positively glowing! We're telling ourselves it's just wind burn!

This afternoon we made a friend, around the hostel is cat and two kittens, one came to see us today and we gave him his first taste of a comfy lap to sleep on! We're just suckers for them kitten eyes! He is very young, still at the stage of jumping two legged rather than walking and just about managed the jump onto the bed so we fell in love!

The first of many awesome days to come in NZ, does this place really have it all, it's just so far from home!

*We promise to upload some photographs tomorrow, we have limited internet here but we will organise it as soon as possible!*