Day 139 - Lake Tekapo & Lake Pukai, South Island - Saturday 3rd March 2012

Yep, believe it or not it's raining again! Ok it's not torrential, we knew it would be colder than Australia but we thought it would be sunny at least! We had a quick wash and brushed our teeth in the campsites bathroom but no shower; both Soph and I (out of principle) will not pay an extra $4 for a shower when we have just paid $40 to rent a 8ft by 4ft patch of concrete!! We checked out of the site and drove 40 yards down the track and stopped at the side of Lake Tekapo and had our breakfast of muesli and a coffee. Then, partly because we wanted to keep warm and dry, we had a look around the village shops and stopped at the "Church of the good Shepard"; this is an amazing church perched right on the edge of the lake, with amazing views and scenery. The church is about the size of three small cars parked side by side, it's so small and very cold!! We then walked back to the top of the village and moved the car so it was parked at the foot of the Mount John walkway. Once we were parked we began our walk to the top and after only about one hour we had reached the summit! At the top there is an Astro Café and some observatory's to look at the stars and planets, the view at night is supposed to be amazing - such a shame that the one night we stay its cloudy and we couldn't see anything! After a yummy muffin and two flat whites whilst admiring the scenery, we started our walk back down - it was so cold our noses were bright red and running by the time we reached the bottom. We had planned to go to the Alpine hot springs, I thought they were going to be natural springs and geezers full of the earth's minerals etc etc… but they were just posh swimming pools and Jacuzzi's and were full, with lots of kids splashing about - not a place to chill in the amazing scenery! So instead we started our drive to Lake Pukaki - couple of hours drive and we had arrived. Soph and I are trying to use new words to describe the scenery in New Zealand but the hard thing is that words don't do it justice and the photos never capture it properly - so you just really have to just see it for yourself. Trust me when I say you would not be disappointed!

Yet again this place was beautiful beyond words. We had again found a DOC site (department of conservation) which simply means - 1) Amazing Views 2) Natural beauty 3) no showers & only sometimes toilet - HOWEVER 4) It's either really cheap or in this case free!!

Our view out the back of the camper was the lake with the snow-capped mountains in the background - pretty amazing. The view is bettered by the fact that the water on the lake is a spectacular turquoise - apparently the bright blue colour of the water is due to 'rock flour' (sediment) in the water. This sediment was created when the lake's basin was gouged out by a stony bottomed glacier moving across the lands surface, with the rock on rack action grinding out fine particles that ended up being suspended in the glacial melt water. The sediment gives the water a milky quality and refracts the sunlight beaming down.

Well here we stayed and me, "Master Chef Adam" knocked up another brilliant masterpiece of a meal… baked beans on toast with grated cheese on top and a touch of pepper! Dinner done, we got the bed out and watched season one of Entourage on the laptop - 5 episodes later we finally slept!!