Lake Tekapo to Christchurch

When we leave Oamaru it's hot and sunny again, and I've made myself a friend, a seven-year-old Taiwanese girl travelling on the bus with her mum. As soon as she finds out I'm vegetarian, that's it: she spends practically the entire one-hour journey to the viewpoint of Mount Cook running through questions about what I eat:
"So you don't eat beef?" "No, I don't eat animals.
"So you don't eat lamb?" "Nope, I don't."
"So you don't eat chicken/mussels/shrimp/pork...insert meat-form here?" Ad infinitum. All accompanied by disbeliving wide-eyes and incomprehension. I guess they don't have many veggies in Taiwan, or at least not that she's met!

We also pass a town which has shrunk so much that businesses there have started to amalgamate - the post office in the gas station, for example. The best blend has to be the local butcher having a side-line as the local undertaker though! Apparently in a newspaper interview he stressed that he 'strove to keep his two businesses seperate' ! It's a bit worrying that he had to emphasise that point, really!

When we stop off at a viewpoint across a gigantic deep-blue lake to Mount Cook it's a breath-taking sight. The sun glints off the snow on the peak, glittering in the water as it beams down out of an almost cloudless sky. The Maori called Mount Cook 'Aoraki' meaning 'Cloud Piercer'.

At Lake Tekapo our driver stops off at the Church of the Good Shepherd and the sheepdog statue, towards the edge of what is optimistically called the 'town'. It's a cute little stone church, looking out over the gorgeous blue waters of Lake Tekapo, and when we arrive there's a wedding taking place. Later on, after dumping my stuff at the lakeside YHA where I'm staying, I take a picnic out to the rocks on the lakeside, sitting in the sun with the church at my back and the blue waters, surrouded by uninabited hills, to the front.

Back at the hostel I watched the sunset from garden table looking out at the lake, accompanied by the podgy, anti-social hostel cat, with tea and the last of my Cadbury factory samples.

The next morning I woke up so early that I managed to get outside in time to watch the sunset, from the first light behind the hills to the East, as it progressed, from orange to pink, the bright pink cloud scudded across the sky over the lake, and finally to the light gray of normal early-morning light.

Then it was time to pack up again and head off to Christchurch. My original hostel managed to turn my booking for a bed in a 3-bed dorm into 3 people in a double room (hmm?), so I have to move across the Foley Towers, which turns out to be a pretty decent hostel. Returning to Christchurch means I know my way around and have seen most of the touristy bits, so I just check out the market at the Arts Centre for the rest of the afternoon.

written by

LizIsHere on March 20, 2010 from Christchurch, New Zealand

from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010

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