Due South

Day 7: Lake Tekapo and Aoraki/Mount Cook

Early this morning, we grabbed our short flight from Auckland to Christchurch, and rented a car at the airport (yes, as last-minute as you can get)! This is going to be our car for our entire tour of the South Island. We drove from Christchurch down to Lake Tekapo, where there was a beautiful view of the lake with snow-capped mountains in the background.  We stopped by a tiny church overlooking the lake, and then headed down by the water, where there were tons of rocks, and people had built rock stacks (called rock balancing) everywhere. Of course, we built one too, right before we left! We then drove all the way to Aoraki/Mount Cook. The entire drive was so scenic and spectacular, with massive mountains surrounding us on all sides, and sheep grazing just about everywhere! New Zealand seems to be all mountains and sheep! We’re not complaining, though – we’re loving it!

We drove through more (steeper) mountains to reach Aoraki/Mount Cook, which is essentially a teeny tiny one-circular-road town built at the base of some gigantic mountains. We arrived in the evening, but since it’s winter, it gets dark here pretty early. The town was really really small. We found a place to stay (of the three places to choose from), and though it was somewhat pricey, we were happy to have a nice place to sleep for a night.

The silence here is indescribable. Actually, the silence pretty much anywhere we go in New Zealand is so wonderful. If you just stop, you can actually hear what nothing sounds like. And it may be one of the most inspiring sounds in the world.

Also, there are stars everywhere! More stars than we’ve seen anywhere in the world! With barely any buildings anywhere in the country, there is nothing unnatural to block out the beauty of the night. And is it ever stunning! A night sky full of millions of stars you can actually see – it’s almost as if we never knew that this many stars even existed! It definitely puts the size of our life into perspective. (Another fun fact about NZ: instead of following the North Star like us, they follow the Southern Cross constellation! And here, we see the same constellations but at a different angle than in the northern hemisphere...) Pretty cool (or maybe not – everything seems cool to us these days)!

Anyhoo, a good night’s rest tonight, and can’t wait to do some treks in the morning!

p.s. We have also been so fortunate that the weather has been on our side in every place we have visited, and hopefully we will continue to be so lucky! It’s been chilly, but not unbearable with the right number of layers. Winter here isn’t as bad as we were worried it might be. Yay! 

 Our very own Rock Stack on Lake Tekapo