All the T Towns - Twizel, Tekapo & Timaru

Sunday 16 March

Time to head to the coast again - definite sense of deja vu as we followed familiar roads through to Tekapo and on to Timaru.

We parked up at the familiar NZMCA site at Tekapo, met Jenny & Warren in their Snowy SRC19 (turned out they had collected it from Vanari the same day as us back in December and saw us heading to Ruakaka campsite as they arrived to collect theirs!) then made a picnic and headed off to walk the Lake Tekapo Peninsula Walkway.

The walkway was a bit bumpier than expected and at one point turned into a 1:3 downhill pathway/slippy slide, so we took a detour and rejoined the track via a somewhat less gnarly descent!

Came back 2 hours later absolutely sweltering so had a quick dip in the receding waters for Lake Tekapo before setting off again for Timaru and the Phar Lap Raceway. The lake water was pretty "refreshing" but it was even chillier when you stood up and got blasted by the cold breeze that suddenly sprung up.

It was incredible how low the water levels in the lake have fallen just in the short time we have been visiting - when we first stopped in Tekapo in January the lake was lapping the stones in the photo below. Now the island that Louis swam around then is about twice the size and you can pretty much walk out to it without the water going higher than thigh level. It's been a hot dry summer & autumn here.

Arriving at Phar Lap Raceway, we lined ourselves up to catch as much solar as possible but still with a view of the raceway. No boujee dinner in town this time - we had a lovely teriyaki salmon salad at Banjo & turned in early to blog & watch Top Gun : Maverick - such a great sequel after all those years!