The flight from Wellington to Christchurch, was quick and unexciting. A short wait at the gate after a quick Uber to the Wellington Airport, Up, Down and we were there. Our new ride, a Toyota Corolla, is smaller than the Yaris, and not a hybrid, but it works just fine.
Lake Tekapo
After a snooze in Christchurch, we were on the road again to Lake Tekapo. The highways so far are significantly different than the north island; they are straighter and there are fewer mountains. So, it was an easy 3 hour drive out.
Lake Tekapo itself is not much to look at. It is a man-made reservoir with the dam at the townsite. However, it was busy. We pulled into the main town area about noon and were quite surprised with the number of people around.
While we were in Christchurch, we stopped at a grocery store and bought our traditional travel food: meat, buns and cheese, and had made sandwiches for our lunch, so we skipped all of the restaurants and headed to a picnic table at the beach.
Lake Tekapo was only ever intended as an overnight stop for us so that we didn’t have an eyewatering drive from Christchurch to Clyde, a five-and-a-half-hour journey, all in one day. Clyde is where our big cycling adventure begins and, understanding the nature of New Zealand’s roads, we didn’t want to rush things.
Arriving over three hours before our check-in time gave us the opportunity to do some exploring. However, as the town centre is only about 3 city blocks long, it took no time at all to complete.
Lake Tekapo is part of the “dark skies” initiative which looks to preserve parts of the world from light pollution. One of the few things in town is a small planetarium which offers both star shows and trips to a specific dark area to view the night time sky. We opted not to do either as the star show seemed very small and the night time skies tour started at 1:15 am, and we weren’t going to stay up for that. In front of the planetarium was a sign saying a “Bard” was offering a “tale of the stars” starting at 10:00pm, so we opted to do that later.
Our next option was to look for a hike. The Alltrails app on my phone showed there were only two hikes in the area. One around a point in the lake and the other up to the observatory situated at the top of the mountain overlooking town.
The trip around the point wasn’t very interesting, so, up the mountain it was. The Mt. John Summit trail is a short, but steep trail up to the observatory. The track gains about 300 metres over about 3 km, mostly through a pine forest. So, although it was about 25C for the hike, it was hot but not “overly” hot because of the trees.
The views from the top were worth the hike.
Once done it was time to check in to our accommodation. As I mentioned, the town seemed very busy. When I was booking accommodation in October, I was only able to find a few options. The one I ended up choosing was a shared accommodation space. We had one of five small rooms with a shared kitchen and living area. The Wi-Fi was the fastest we have found in New Zealand so we spent the rest of the afternoon surfing the web.
It was finally dark by 10:00, although there was a half moon hanging in the western sky. The Bard show was very entertaining. Done totally in the dark, the bard told Maori tales about the area, showed us the southern cross and various southern constellations, and, even arranged for the International Space Station to fly over. Ok, he really didn’t arrange for the space station to fly over, but it did, none the less.
Back at the accommodation, we had to wait until the moon went down, about midnight, then we drove a short while out of town to where it was totally black to view the sky. While it didn’t disappoint, I think we have seen as good of views of the Milky Way galaxy on some of our camping trips, so it was back to the accommodation and out for the night.
Mount Cook
Sunday dawned warm and perfectly clear. After a fancy pancake breakfast, we were back on the road.
The first sighting of Mount Cook is about three-quarters of an hour from Lake Tekapo at the Lake Pukaki Viewpoint. Coming down a hill and turning right into the parking lot provides a stunning view of the snowcapped peak with an amazingly clear blue back ground and hanging over the Lake Louise blue lake.
Fifty-five kilometers later we were at the mountain and the visitors’ centre. This seemed to be where all the people at Lake Tekapo ended up. The parking lot at the base of the mountain was absolutely packed. We just turned in, took a picture and turned back out. The real value for us was the Sir Edmound Hillary Museum at the hotel.
The museum provides an over view of Hillay’s early climbing years, details his trip up Everest and shows some of his later life discussing trips to look for Yeti and a trip to the south pole. We watched part of a movie about his early life, but decided we didn’t have time to watch the movie.
So, back on the road again, up and over Lindis pass and into our cycling point, Clyde.
Clyde
The town of Clyde is an old gold mining town with all sorts of historic buildings from the 1800s. Our accommodation is in an old compound, and our room was a part of the stables. However, it is quaint and serves our needs as tomorrow we are off to the trail.
Interesting.