Day 14: Tuesday, March 4, Lake Tekapo/Mt. Cook

Wildflowers on the edge of Lake Tekapo. This picture doesn't do the lake justice because at this angle you can't see the deep blue of the lake.

Today we just drove down from Christchurch to Arrowtown with stops along the way.

Lake Tekapo is known for its rich blue hue and for a tiny chapel situated all alone sticking out into the lake. You can see Mt. Cook (the highest mountain in NZ) across the lake.

Rocks disturb the reflections off Lake Pukaki.

We then went drove on to Mt. Cook with a stop at Lake Pukaki. We weren’t planning to stop there, but we drove by and stopped because of the color. I thought it was much more intriguing than Lake Tekapo, though Tekapo had the nice chapel and the surroundings are greener. Both are surrounded by tall hills/small mountains – this is the Southern Alps area of NZ, so we have basically been driving through valleys since just before Lake Tekapo.

Next up was Mt. Cook. Everything screams glacial. You drive to Mt. Cook via a road that twists along the side of the hills lining a valley. In the valley is a plain of rounded stones. The mountains on either side of you have gashes down their sides that mark where ice or water flows. The Helm’s Deep scenes in the second Lord of the Rings movie could have been filmed in any similar valley.(minus the glacial pebbles). After a walk through Hooker Valley it was on to Arrowtown. We didn’t leave without incident, however. We backed into a rock in the rental van and had all sorts of mental pictures of our bumper as we walked around to survey the damage. Fortunately we hit the rock square on with the trailer hitch, so it actually didn’t do any damage at all. (I’m not sure why they put a trailer hitch on the van because it can barely lug its own weight around, but I’m glad they did.)

Another note on driving is that all of the cars over here have dual convex mirrors, but they never label them. (The convex mirror in the U.S. is the passenger side one that says “Objects in mirror…” Just imagine having those on both sides. It’s a little disorienting.)

It may not sound like we did much on this day, but we were on the road for nine hours on what should have been a 3.5 hr drive. There are so many places to stop and just soak things in that it was a relaxing and memorable day without being an eventful day. Here in NZ you don’t have to “do” anything to enjoy it. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have thrills, however…