Sheep Poop: It's Everywhere!!!
Today Sarah and I hauled our luggage to Hertz and picked up our shiny Toyota Corolla, grabbed a few maps, bought extra insurance and got ready to drive 3 or so hours north to Lake Tekapo. Sarah turned out to be a great driving coach, as she helped me carefully maneuver down a one way street, then the big challenge: a roundabout!
Luckily I am good at following signs and simply went towards the left and "gave way" to oncoming cars. I did have some issues keeping in the middle of the lane, as my natural instinct was to pull to the left. At least three times we heard that loud sound that means "you're running off the road and onto the shoulder!" but i assured Sarah that we were safe (secretly thinking that my confidence was dropping every time i heard that sound, but what was my other option? hugging the center line? i was too scared to do that because i closed my eyes every time i passed an oncoming car!!).
We successfully made it out of Queenstown and began our journey up and down mountains, through valleys and past lakes up to Lake Tekapo. Sarah seemed to enjoy the view, and i tried to look around but kept thinking I would fall off the cliff if I took my eyes off the road. I've never been such a safe driver!!
There were so many bikers on the roads, and I felt so bad for these fools who thought it would be a good idea to bike up a mountain! Luckily I didn't hit one, but those suckers were everywhere and in the middle of the road! Kiwis have a weird thing about passing, and because most of the roads are only 2 lanes, they never let one drive slow the rest of the pack down. So, if a car came up behind me and was close for more than 20 seconds, it would fly around me ASAP. If I got within 100 yards of a car, they would pull off the road if I didn't pass them quickly enough! Also, when turning across traffic, the turning car has the right of way, not the car minding his own business driving along straight in his lane. Weird, i know. I kept wondering why cars would just stop and let me turn :-)
So Sarah and I arrived at Lake Tekapo early afternoon and I'm pretty sure we both immediately though to ourselves "this is it?" Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely breathtaking. What was a shocker was that based on travel books, we figured we could spend at least a day there with things to do. Not so much. We checked into the Godley Resort (please use a loose interpretation of the word resort here) and then went into town, essentially 100 yards of shops, a gas station, 5 restaurants and some other hotels.
We decided to take an afternoon hike up to Mt. John's Observatory which was a great place to stargaze at night, and offered great panoramas of the South Canterbury region. It was very windy and a little chilly at the lake, so we assumed it would be colder 700M higher up. When we embarked we had many layers on, and after about 15 minutes of straight up hill climbing we started to strip! I had to take off my pant legs!
You will notice in the pictures, that I found a hiking stick at the base of the path, and it was the most fantastic hiking stick I have ever had. If only I could have taken it back to Nashville!
Anyways, we emerged out of the forrest and as we got close to the top of the 1,000M high Observatory, we looked up and found ourselves standing in a field of sheep. And what do sheep do a lot? POOP! There were little poop pellets everywhere! Sarah and I considered this the perfect opportunity to get a little closer to our newest friends and engage them in talks of wool and grilled rosemary lamb chops. Yum. They wanted none of it, and instead ran away to huddle and talk smack about us. oh, and to poop more.
The 360 degree views from the top were unbelievable and it was 6pm before we knew it so we headed back down the mountain to clean up. After a late dinner we settled on a plan to go looking at stars on our own. Armed with towels to sit on, a flashlight, lots of warm layers, a map of the southern hemisphere constellations and a tripod, we were ready to do some stargazing in front of the Church of the Good Shepherd. We successfully got some shots of the stars and the church, but our masterpieces were the light writing photos! I quickly found out my camera only had up to a 30'' exposure and the bulb setting was manual, so I could not hold the shutter button down long enough for a clear shot. Sooooo I set the exposure to 30" and i ran out in front of the church and said "Sarah press the shutter!" 30 seconds later my name was in lights!
We called it quits around 12:30 and went to bed knowing we had pretty much seen everything Lake Tekapo had to offer, and planned for an early departure.
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