Goodbye Dunedin! Hello Tekapo!

We were slightly sad to leave Dunedin, but understood these things have to happen, so we woke up and drove out to the tallest street again to drive up it. Someone told us it was more impressive that way. The pics do not tell accurately, but it was more IMPRESSIVE that way. Here is a pic from the car.





Alex Baldwin owns Baldwin Street by the way.



No he doesn’t. That was just a terrible joke.

So we drove up the coastline a little bit, until we hit the Moeraki Boulders. These are some big old boulders that are 60 million years old that sit on the beach. To our utter disappointment, no explanation was offered regarding how they formed in either of our tour books, so I guess we’ll have to Wikipedia that stuff.






On the way out to Lake Tekapo, we stopped to see some ancient Maori drawings. However, I found that the surface of this particular wall looked similar to the inside of my mouth.



We stopped at the visitor center (or centre if you are living upside down in Kiwiland) in Lake Pukaki to get views of Mt. Cook (tallest Mount in NZ) with the lake. Would you believe the lake is for real this color? Madness! Evidently caused by sediment mixing with the glacial water, mixing with Benjamin Moore Brilliant Blue 0091!





We continued on to camp at Tekapo. Firstly, we needed a place to camp. We decided after the main campsites in town were full to camp in the outskirts at a place called Lake Superscary. We set up camp where the only other things in the campgrounds were abandoned trailer/campers! Yah!

Feeling rather lonely, we decided to make lunch back in town on the water next to civilization and with a park bench. There were a few seagulls that were very entertaining. After dinner, we decided to try to go on a hike to see Tekapo from above. First, we went the wrong way, and in order to avoid horse poo and go the right way, we turned around. Then it was almost dark, but I pulled a Denise Ladenburg and we hiked to the top in record time to see the sun fading and we took some cool pics!




Johnny was pretty paranoid because in our haste I had run over some lumpy grass in a hurry and rolled my ankle. He consistently gave advice down the mountain so I would prevent reinjury. (“Try to take small steps, no running, walk on your heels”) Meanwhile I just thought he was the cutest.

After we got down we were in a big hurry to get to our site before the last rays of sun faded. We got there in time, but wanted to stay up in order to see the shiny stars. Tekapo is supposed to have the clearest night sky in the entire South Island! We waited until 11:30, but the big, fat moon was way too bright.



We then tried to hit the sack. However, the gurgling river nearby that sounded like footsteps and the park full of empty campers creeped us out! I was up until 4:30 and sometimes waking up John to so he could share in the terror! It was a rough night.
Up, up, and up, then down, down, down, then zzzzzzz, then Timaru