[Lake Tekapo, New Zealand] Another freezing night but it was marginally better with the rear door closed. We had no idea it would be so cold here. It’s an odd climate that we are battling to acclimatize too. It has been very sunny, even hot, but as soon as the wind starts it is freezing. We seem to spend a lot of time putting our fleeces on and off. Guess we’ll get used to it sometime soon.

After breaking camp we headed into Peel forest for two short walks, the first to ‘the Big Tree’ – a 3m wide monster but still small compared to what we have seen in Borneo. The second trail was out to Acland falls. A very small waterfall at the end of a mossy and atmospheric gully. The walk was taxing for me as I’m still feeling weak and the cold wind on sweat did not feel at all comfortable. Out walking we have noticed that these Kiwis all walk in trainers or boots (even on 30minute long trails) – guess they are not as tough as advertised – we’re still in strops.

Back on the road we headed on south. Geraldine is a larger village with the chance for some shopping. We dropped the van off for a minor repair to the power socket (we thought it was a fuse, but with no manual it was impossible to tell) and went shopping across the street. The shop contained every wool, merino and possum product known to man (willy warmers included). V got herself a new beanie (remember she lost hers in Norway) and we picked up a decent road atlas. The road atlas provided some annoying insights – yesterday we were not at lake Clearwater, but rather at the recreational lake next to it. Also further down the same gravel road was the LOTR filming location for Edoras – we should have recognized those snow covered peaks behind rolling brown grasslands yesterday ! Oh well. V is now very happy with her new map and we’ll be sure to catch a lot more sights.

We passed through a bunch of mini villages including the cutely name ‘Fairlie’ on our way to lake Tekapo, our destination for the day. The viewpoint at the entrance to the village was inspiring. A huge cyan lake stretched out before us with cloud covered mountains to the right. The campsite was crowded (by our new standards) and expensive due to the coin operated showers. Some industrious campers had moved the site numbers around so that they could have a better campsite, the end result being that we ended up on someone else’s site. It was more than a little frustrating. We took a short walk along the lakeside but decided to call it a day and start fresh in the morning with a hike up to the Mount John Observatory.

[Pictures: A view of Lake Tekapo]

– Posted from my iPhone via 3G