From Pukaki to Tekapo - a Beauty Pageant of Lakes

Monday 24 February

It was another stunning dawn, with the campground bathed in golden light. Leaving beautiful Aoraki we headed west to Tekapo - one day, without Banjo, we’ll try out the canal road, but for today we stuck to SH8.

We passed a cyclist after the Burkes Pass with such a loaded bicycle I am not sure how she managed to get up any of the hills. We followed her for a while until we were able to pass with a wide berth - I think we were equal parts in awe and thinking she was utterly mad!

Less than an hour later we passed Mt John with the observatory on top, and dropped down towards the lake and pulled into Tekapo and set up at the NZMCA site near the Lake. Cooked up a breakfast frittata for lunch with the contents of our fridge and then settled in for a siesta - time for a real down day!

Later Louis went for a 3km swim down the lake while I chilled then had a quick dip - 10 whole strokes of breaststroke!!!

We considered eating out for dinner but only the super expensive restaurant took our fancy so we headed to Four Square, bought more veggies and made a spaghetti pesto veggie dinner - yum!

As sun set we took a tiki tour along Lilybank Road that the campsite sits on - 20 beautiful kilometres later it was getting dark so we turned back.

Found out we’d gone less than half the way up the east side of Lake Tekapo… the bit you see in town at the Church of the Good Shepherd is just a tiny taster with no indication of how far the waters extend!