Day 52 – Queenstown to Lake Tekapo

The Kiwi office told me the bus should arrive around 9.10am but it didn’t arrive until 9.20 and the bus was very small… I was also sad to see my driver was Bridget. I thought she’d be ages in front by now but clearly not. She’s not a terrible driver, it’s just she’s not fun and it feels more like she’s your teacher and you’re on a school trip rather than entertaining as we are paying her wages! This tiny bus made it’s way around to Nomads where there was another bus, which was much bigger. It is summer in New Zealand, which makes it a popular time for tourists. Although there are buses everyday, occasionally they put on two to cope with the demand, otherwise there would always be a backlog of people waiting to leave.

Our first stop was in Cromwell for breakfast and toilets. Here is where I tried my first Afghan biscuit, it’s a chocolate cookie like thing with a walnut on top, it was pretty delicious, I’m not sure what is actually in it but I would purchase another one. We then stopped to lookout over Lake Pukaki to see Mount Cook. Mount Cook has recently lost 30m so is now only 3,724 metres high. There are 22 mountains in this area that are over 3,050m high. The view from here was spectacular, Bridge said this is the best weather she’s seen here in a very long time and that we were very lucky to see it and the lake in perfect blue. She said she was here only a few days before and it was so cloudy you couldn’t even see the lake. Generally throughout New Zealand I’ve had good weather to do and see the things I’ve wanted to do but then that’s why I chose to come here in Feb/March because it’s their best weather months.

It was a straight drive through to Lake Tekapo where we arrived just gone 3pm. I ventured down to the lake and just chilled out there for a few hours, catching some rays and then went on the short walk to the shops. The ‘Church of the good shepherd’ is located just by the lake on top of a small hill and was built in January 1935. I then walked back to Lakefront Lodge and cooked myself some dinner.