Lake Tekapo 2 & arriving in Christchurch

Getting up late this morning we had breakfast (porridge, toast) overlooking the amazing view of Lake Tekapo. After successfully fending off the hangry ducks we headed over to the town to view a church and a walk. Before I prattle on about our day I’ve forgotten about our stargazing experience last night. At 10pm we were bussed over to a crater just outside the town where it’s ridiculously dark, in a ‘dark sky reserve’ which Amelia is going to research and let us all know the criteria of. There we were guided about the stars by 3 astronomers. After around 15-20 minutes our eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I’ve never seen so many stars in the night sky. We were guided through the Orion and Tarantula nebulas, Saturn and the 47 something. The experience itself was brilliant, however they did go into a lot of detail about the actual science of astronomy. Having studied cosmology in A level physics I understood the basic principles (sort of, it was over 10 years ago now...feeling old) so could almost follow what he was describing. They could have made it more ‘mainstream’ but as an experience it was so different and definitely one I would recommend. The Japanese bus driver was also hilarious, Amelia’s ‘favourite person’ apparently.

Church of the Good Shepherd

Back to today and we had a quick look at the Church of the good Shepherd at the waters edge in Tekapo. A pretty nondescript church, however it’s jewel is the large panoramic windows behind the altar looking over the lake. It really doesn’t need stained glass or any decoration with that ridiculous view. We did a quick walk around Cowans hill, which took us past the stargazing crater from last night, which was nice. 

Lake Tekapo

We headed off for Christchurch at midday-ish, stopped off for petrol, stopped off for lunch, and arrived in Christchurch (back at a Top10 again, it’s good to be back) after a slight detour through the city centre, at half 4ish. Just had a great dinner and our bottle of Prosecco we picked up from the free food shelf at Queenstown. Tomorrow we’re going into the city for an explore (and probably an indecent amount of food).