Lake Tekapo and MT John

Happy new year everyone!! 💥🍾🥳

Today I woke up to some light clouds. But it looked like they will pass over and all the locals told me yesterday, that it's gonna be really nice weather today and really hot.

The wind tough was annoying as usual.
I had a fast breakfast as sitting outside my car in the wind isn't so nice when the wind is blowing the sand around.
I went back to the city to make a plane for the next days what was good, as many campgrounds in this area are already fully booked 😳
I never had problems like this before! For the night I could only find a campground in Fairlie, which is around 40 km back from where I came from yesterday. But at least I have one now, the weather is supposed to change with rain over the night and tomorrow and then I want to have a kitchen to cook in.

After solving this problem I went to Mount John and started to walk the track up to the Observatory.
It was a nice walk up, not too though.
Up there the sky looked really strange. It's a really strange light today and it looks so foggy in a way and in a way not. Really strange.

I heard later that this is the smoke from the bushfires in Australia that the wind is blowing over the Tasman Sea to New Zealand.
And it got worst and worst over the day 😳
You can really smell the smoke and it burns a little bit in the eyes as well...
You could imagine that the bushfires in Australia can have so much impact in New Zealand as well.

I met a couple from Germany almost at the top of Mt John and we were ending up drinking a hot chocolate together in the cafe and walking back over the other track beside the lake.
I was back at the carpark by 3.30 pm.
I then just stopped at the Chuch of the Good Shepherd and was lucky enough to get some pictures without other people on it, I don't know how I managed, as there were millions of people around. 🙈

As the view got worst I decided to drive to the campground in Fairlie.
It's the same here and as I then heard on the radio is it like this all over the south island today!
I hope the wind is changing until tomorrow or at least within the next two days.
You can't see the mountains anymore and around 6 pm it was already as dark as it usually is around 9 pm 😳Read more