Lake Tekapo
- Apr 26
- 3 min read
April 24-27, 2025 - Lake Tekapo. Lake Tekapo is known for its beautiful blue lake, for stargazing and for it's church. It is a part of the the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve. The church is the Church of the Good Shephard and it's lovely panoramic views. It has about 400 full year residents and is known as a vacation spot. We really enjoyed our time here and would rate it 9/10 for accommodation, rabbits, and walkability. We would come back again.
April 24 - We drove from Oamaru to Lake Tekapo.
Along the way we drove through Duntroon to the Mauri cave paintings. Unforunately, some were carved out and the others weren't in a great state of repair. These were the best shots I could get.
Buni also joined us
We were moving into the mountainous area of the country and could already see them in the distance.
We stopped for a coffee and snack in Kurow. Even though this scone and shortbread looked really good, it was only average.
We stopped to look at the spill from the hydro-electric dam on the Waitaki River
On our way to the Omarama clay cliffs. After 10 miles of unpaved road we finally arrived and it turned out to be mildly interesting. The cliffs are a combination of sand stone and clay that have worn down over the centuries. They looked quite a lot like the Badlands.
and had a nice view back towards the mountains
It made for an interesting hike to be able to go through some narrow areas
which were incredibly quiet.
From the clay cliffs we went through Twizel, which had nothing going for it other than its name.
We finally got to Lake Pukaki and got our first looks at Mount Cook
We finally arrived at Lake Tekapo where we stayed at the McKensey Suites. This was a lovely place that had a lovely bath, fire place and view.
Here is the view from our room in the morning
There were even some poles to replace Chris broken one.
A big highlight for us was walking by the petting zoo and seeing a field full of rabbits (no photos).
April 25 - ANZAC Day.
There is a day spa with heated pools nearby. The area also has ice skating and snowboarding. Chris found me a morning special for a massage plus entry to the heated pools/sauna/steam room and a coffee. The massage was lovely and went with a chai latte.
The views from the pools were lovely. I went back in the evening to watch the sunset.
In the afternoon we walked over to see the Church of the Good Shephard. We saw a lot of bunnies along the way (no photos). The photo on the right is the view from inside the church - not sure how anyone can concentrate on the sermon.
Buni joined us for a view of the lake
and we stopped to look at the monument to collies/sheep dogs
April 26 - 2 hikes and Mt. Cook.
Today we started early to walk up Mt. John and see the observatory. This was a 5.6 mile hike and up about 1300 feet.
The view from the top was quite amazing
and we stopped for a coffee and cake at the Astro Cafe
In the afternoon we drove to Mount Cook and took the popular walk to Mount Hooker. The second bridge was under repair so the walk was only 3 miles round trip and very crowded due to the holiday weekend. It took us close to Mt. Hooker and you could see the glaciers.
Mount Cook is known as the training ground used by Hillary when he was in training for his ascent of Mt Everest. There is a monument to those who lost their lives climbing the mountain.
There is a mountaineering school in the town. As usual, the mountain was partially covered with clouds, but we got a couple reasonable shots.
On the way home there was a 30 minute traffic jam as a result of an accident between a car and a motorcycle. We were lucky it wasn't worse.
Our stargazing that was planned for tonight was canceled due to cloud cover - this is another reason to come back again.
Tomorrow we are off to Christchurch where we will be for a week. Look for the next post in about 7 days!
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