Starting and ending our day by a lake

We woke up early this morning to catch the sunrise over Lake Pukaki. Last night was one of the colder nights we've had but we both slept reasonably well, hopefully this means we are getting use to it. As Nick made his porridge I headed on down to the lakeside to admire the changing colours of the sky, mountains and water. Although not the most vibrant sunrise it was still incredibly beautiful and peaceful to sit and watch. Nick joined me, breakfast in hand to enjoy the show. That morning we witnessed the downside to freedom camping. It turns out one of the vans that parked in front of us late last night isn't certified self contained so it isn't allowed to be parked there and can only go to paid campsites with facilities, because they have no sink or toilet. This was emphasised when we witnessed the guy from said van brush his teeth and spit it out near the lakeside before urinating on a tree nearby, even though there are pretty good toilets 200m away. They clearly wanted to not get caught and make a swift exit but they opted to rent a cheaper non self contained van so it is frustrating to see them getting away with being there and abusing the landscape. Freedom camping has recently got a lot stricter because of people like this and it's a shame on everyone else who is treating the environment with respect. My favourite quote related to this is "take only photographs, leave only footprints". If only everyone had the same mentality. Despite this, waking up knowing we are parked on a lakeside with views of the alps was just fantastic. After breakfast and getting sorted we headed to the vistor centres at Pukaki and Twizel to get an idea of what to do today. This has resulted in us booking and tour to the Tasman Glacier near Mount Cook, NZ largest glacier. The trip includes a scenic helicopter ride over the alps before landing on the glacier itself to do a hike hopefully with some ice caves exploration as well if the glacier has any on the day. They provide us with all the clothing and gear to walk on ice so we are super excited to do it on Wednesday. It was expensive but we figured this is why we've worked for 8 months so we can do amazing things like this. We decided to then visit Lake Ohau, the one lake everyone seems to miss because it's a detour from the highway. We ended up on a gravel road going 20km an hour because we didn't realise there is a sealed road available further down the highway. Finally we arrived at the edge of the lake and a dam. There's lots of canals for salmon farming around here and where the canal meets a lake they have a hydroelectric dam in place. Everyone was parked here to fish but we headed up the road only 100m or so until out of sight of these cars and came to an amazing lookout carpark where we backed the van up and opened the doors to get another beautiful view. We made tea and sat for a while enjoying not being able to hear a single other person around. We spent a good couple of hours sat with the doors open playing games and enjoying the scenery even if it did mean every bug ever tring to come into the van. After a while we headed to our camp spot for the night which is on Lake Poaka and after admiring the autumn colours as we strolled around the lake we've come inside to bunk down for the night and to make stir fry. There's so much natural beauty here in New Zealand, it's wonderful.Read more