Lake Tekapo

Day 2, our South Island experience was finally about to start, weather forecast clear skies, perfect...
Our tight schedule didn't leave us much to time to explore Geraldine, apparently there are some good activities to do in here and it is considering a perfect weekend escape for Christchurch families.
After getting some stuff from the the local supermarket we hit the highway once again at 10:30 am. Half an hour later we arrived in Fairlie at the end of SH79, small town with basic facilities.

En route again this time on SH8 it took us another half an hour to get to Lake Tekapo. I overtook a couple of buses full of tourist that of course were heading in the same direction so I sped up so we could be there first.

Lake Tekapo was everything we expected, pristine clear waters from ice melting in the mountains with a perfect blue colour, of course my camera didn't stop shooting photos. I just imaging how beautiful the place must be in winter, when the mercury drops below freezing point and snow covers the whole area

On one side of the lake lays the Church of good sheperd, from the inside the views of the lake are simply astonishing, 200m from there is the bronze statue of the sheep dog another spot to get some photos. By this time the buses were already here and the the tourist were spreading around, we waited 15 minutes and then all of them had just vanished again, I guess their schedule was even tighter than ours.

Twizel was a bit under an hour drive from there so with some spare time up our sleeves we have to chose between going to the local Ice skating rink to do a fool of ourselves or to pay a visit to the salmon farm to get something for dinner, of course we decided to go to the farm despite the complaints from my daughter, the only skater in the group.

The farm is located along the hydro canal that provides power supply to the area. A whole Salmon was only 18 NZ dollars the equivalent to 1kg back in Australia, the fish comes carefully pack in a container with plenty of Ice. For a couple of extra dollars we were allowed to feed the fish, good idea to keep children entertained

From the farm the road along the canal takes you to the shores of lake Pukaki and from there a nice drive along the lake took us back to SH8, passing by the visitor centre and Twizel.

Twizel has really good facilities and a good supermarket which makes it a good alternative to visit Mt Cook area. We stayed at Aspen Court Motel, really good value for money, they actually gave us a bbq to cook our fresh salmon, dinner was already organised. We felt as though we hadn't had any snacks at Lake Tekapo so we stop at Poppies Cafe for lunch, the place is quite nice with a souvenir shop, putt putt area and some kids playground.

In the afternoon we had time to visit the nearby Lake Ruataniwha before coming back to the motel to light the bbq up. Staying over in Geraldine cutting driving times had finally paid offRead more