Lake Tekapo

We were really excited for our next location on the trip, as Lake Tekapo (or Take-a-poo as it had become amongst our friends) was a famous area for star gazing due to the very low light pollution in the area. 

Before we got to hostel we were staying at, Mangee took us to a few locations first! The first was just to a cafe for a morning coffee but there was also an unusual fruit sculpture that a friend had told us to visit previously.

Next was to a huge lake where Mount cook was in prime viewing position. The lake was a gorgeous turquoise colour, and Mangee said he usually encouraged people to take a dip, but today it was just too cold!

We also stopped at some picturesque places on road sides to soak in the view and stretch our legs. With young Archie constantly hyper, he insisted on a photo opportunity with a toy wolf he found!

As we approached Tekapo, Mangee took us to an iconic location, which was a church just teetering on the edge of the lake. The sun was shining and the lake was azure blue. The church was stunning against such a spectacular backdrop, and the view from inside the church was too good to ignore the sign saying not to take pictures 

Mangee had told us to really take advantage of the romantic location, and maybe also go on a walk to the top of the mountains to catch sight of he spectacular scenery and also to take a look at the observatory located at the top.

We arrived at a small hostel where we were divided into rooms. The cottage was really cute and cosy, and the large living area had a window perfectly framing the gorgeous view.

As we were only spending one night at Tekapo, we decided to head out and do the walk straight away. It was perfect conditions, slightly autumnal so the leaves were red and the air was fresh. It really was living up to its romantic reputation, which made Mark miss Iqra so he decided to stay in the room and have some personal reflection time rather than do the walk. Plus he was still feeling pretty grotty.

We ascended the tall mountain, along with another English guy we met on the bus. The walk was fairly tough, as it was steep and narrow and very windy. We had a few stops along the way to take in the unusually flat ground surrounding Tekapo, and of course we had Archie up to his old tricks.

the peak of the mountain!

As we reached the top, we were astounded at just how huge the lake was! It stretched for miles and miles and the colour was out of this world! We were really glad we had done the walk despite the freezing wind whipping us! We decided to have a hot drink at the observatory cafe and wait till the sunset.

Steph took the opportunity to pay back the little French guy on the bus, as he had given her a coffee when she was feeling rough after Mindys house party in Queensland. 

She had bumped into him at the right time and he had simply offered her a coffee from cookie time with a piece of cookie on top! She was so delighted and couldn't believe her luck and he explained that he believed that if he was generous to others then he would receive nice gestures from people later on. Although Steph buying him a coffee was a very literal way of paying him back, he was honestly very grateful.

We chatted with him until we saw the sun start to sink from the sky behind the mountains. We ran outside to watch the amazing colours change the scenery around us.

We suddenly realised that navigating back down the steep hill in complete darkness wouldn't be ideal so we quickly made our way down watching the beautiful pink sky change colour.

We got back to lodge and cooked some food. We sat by the fire and started to watch movies whilst we waited till we were ready to brave the cold to star gaze.  

After watching 'Captain America' and deciding our beers were sufficiently chilled, we got dressed up into our warmest clothes and went outside and sat on the rocky lake side.

The stars were not the best we'd ever seen as the ones we'd seen on Toms birthday in Peru on top of the mountain had been amazing. However they were still impressive and luckily for us this time someone had a camera good enough to capture them! Andy took snaps of us all on the lake side and when we got too cold, we ran around with our phone lights taking pictures on his camera too.

It was a really nice evening, and in retrospect one of our favourite locations, just due to its pure beauty!

The next day we would be going to the polar opposite of such scenery, as we would be journeying to what was left of Christchurch after the tragic earthquake years previously.