Finding my way …………….
With our time in the North Island now at an end, we packed up this morning for our flight from Wellington to Christchurch. We had a light breakfast at the airport whilst we waited for our 10am flight. Checkin was quick – so quick that we did not even have any security to go through ! – dropped our checked in bags, upstairs to the lounge and then straight through to the plane when the time came !
We arrived in Christchurch just after 11am and after picking up our next car – a Mitsubishi ASX – set off for Lake Tekapo. Although we came into Christchurch 25 years ago, I had little memory of the place as we drove off. There wasn’t a lot of traffic and almost immediately the scenery was just so much more “expanded” than it had been in the North Island. Not far out of Christchurch, we stopped at a viewpoint looking at the snow capped peaks of the southern alps.
We had around 3 or so hours drive to Lake Tekapo and only made a couple of stops along the way. The first was at Rakaia Gorge where glacial activity millions of years ago and the current river have forged a spectacular pathway through the valley. Even under partially cloudy skies, the blue/green colour fed from snow and rain runoff is quite spectacular.
For a late lunch we stopped in the town of Geraldine. We stopped in at Barker’s Foodstore, an institution in Geraldine for 50 years. We had a sausage roll and coffee but the store itself is so much more with various sauces, jams, drinks etc for sale. It was certainly very popular.
We drove on to Lake Tekapo and the weather changed dramatically as we drove along. The relatively sunny day changed to dark clouds and winds and we drove through quite a bit of rain. However as we got closer the rain eased and it was relatively clear by the time we arrived – but very cold !
We were given an upgrade to our room and had a lakeview suite. After settling in we went for a walk to the town centre and decided that as we now had a kitchen with our upgrade, and a view over the lake from our balcony, we would get few things from the supermarket to self cater for the evening. So we then went back and had a couple of drinks as we watched the sun go down with the backdrop of the snow covered peaks – and the cold had us retreating inside !
We had a casual dinner and did some washing ready for moving on tomorrow – and finding my way !