🐧 Timaru, Lake Tekapo & Mt. Cook
We drove southward from Christchurch to the next location, Timaru. We initially wanted to stay close to the Lake Tekapo, because that’s the main location for beautiful hikes and nature in that area, but the accommodations around were pretty much fully booked already. Timaru has a nice little beach, on which you can see penguins in the late evening.
Our accommodation had a nice view over the fields and was very quiet, perfectly chill.
Our first stop on the way to Lake Tekapo brought us to the lupin fields, many people stop here for photo sessions.
On the Lake Tekapo are some boats and canoes, it was super hot that day hence we decided to drive up the hill. From here you have a view over the Lake Tekapo, accompanied by a small cafe. The pictures some people made here, posing with their sunglasses, untouched coffees and croissants in front of this view, acting like this is their normal life before getting back into their dirt dusty Toyota Prius. It just warms my heart to see the humbleness of people at work.
The route took us further to Lake Pukaki. This lake gets filled from the Tasman River, and the river comes from the Tasman Lake, which comes from the Tasman Glacier. This Glacier melts down from Mount Cook, the Mountain is the home of many multi day hikes, which we are neither fit enough nor have the gear for. But we did the smaller hikes, to the glacier itself and the Kea Point Track.
We had a long drive back to Timaru, there was an accident on the road with multiple cars involved, so the road was blocked for hours. After roughly 45 minutes a nearby farmer opened the gate of his paddock to let the cars pass. We were silently sitting in our car, patiently, when we discovered slow cars over the horizon to our left, sneaking over the dry field. After that passing by people informed us that we must take the same route over the paddock. It was quite an adventure.
We were quite in a hurry, because shops and restaurant close up as soon as 6 PM here, and we would arrive by 9:30 PM.
After dinner, we went to see penguins. Timaru marina is home to the blue penguins and administration here made sure that marina walk is well lit so that you can watch blue penguins for free.
The iconic blue penguins walk up the rocky shore to find their nest in the bushes after dusk/at dawn in Summer. When we arrived at the Marina, there were lot of people on the side of the road, peaking over the fence. After a while we could see some small penguins running on the beach in the dark. One of them up-to the fence and posed for pictures.
On the next morning, we would head south. 🚗