4th August 2025

I am deep in the heart of the Southern Alps now, in the beautiful town of Tekapo on the shores of the absolutely pristine and stunning Lake Tekapo.  I like it here, the place has a good feel to it.  While Queenstown was very much the tourist circus and not to my liking, there are still a few tourists here in Tekapo, but not so many, and it is much more mellow and chilled with a friendly local vibe.

The Intercity coach journey here from Queenstown was absolutely beautiful, passing first over the Lindis Pass, the highest road point in the South Island apparently, at 971m above sea level.  The landscape was very much sparse and barren up there.  We then descended into the town of Omarama in the Mackenzie Basin, nicknamed “The Place of Light” due to its high altitude, huge skies, and wide horizons.  It is also sheep-farming central, as is most of New Zealand to be honest, and here might be a good time to add in the oft-quoted and fascinating statistic that sheep outnumber people in New Zealand by 5 to 1 – there are around 26 million sheep in the country, and around 5 million people.  The area around Omarama is also famed for gliding, due to its favourable geographical and atmospheric conditions.  We stopped here for our random in-the-middle-of-nowhere loo and refreshment stop.

We then headed through the nearby town of Twizel, whose name I just love, and then skirted beautiful Lake Pukaki, with views across its cold glacial waters over to New Zealand’s highest mountain, Mt Cook, poking its head out of the snow-capped mountain range in the distance which pretty much lined our horizon to the west for the whole journey.  After Lake Pukaki, we then headed towards the next ribbon lake along the way, Lake Tekapo, and while the coach was to continue on to Christchurch, I alighted here to spend the next two nights using this gorgeous little town as a base for my Southern Alp explorations.

After a bit of grocery shopping, noting how very very friendly the local people were, I walked the mile-or-so to my accommodation, across the Lake Tekapo Bridge crossing the Tekapo River, and up a bit of an incline.  The digs were just great – a cheap and cheerful cabin in the front garden of a former travelling Kiwi who has now settled down to family life there with his wife and three boys.  He was a friendly chap, an old-school traveller of the kind I could quite easily have met on my early travels in places like South America in the early 2000s.  He also doubled as the town’s ice hockey referee, which I realized after having seen him in action later that day at the local ice hockey rink situated in the Tekapo Springs.  Definitely a typical Kiwi, a resilient, resourceful, go-get-em type of a guy, who always seemed up for anything.  Or is that a typical Aussie…?

Anyway, after a short rest and a cup of tea, and I think it may have even involved a nap, I began my explorations for the rest of the day.  First up was a walk back down to the beautiful shores of Lake Tekapo, to visit the iconic Church of the Good Shepherd which makes the town of Tekapo famous.  Built in 1935 to remember the first settlers of New Zealand, it has since become one of New Zealand’s most photographed buildings, legendary in its small simplicity surrounded by the achingly beautiful scene of the crisp lake and snowcapped mountains rising in the distance.  Because Tekapo is also famous for its “Dark Sky Experience”, more on that below, the building is also oft-photographed at night set against the wonders of the starry skies above.  Unfortunately on this Sunday of my visit, the Church itself was cordoned off to visitors due to a special Sunday service it was having, so I was unable to enter but instead joined the masses in taking some seriously stunning photos of this highly photogenic beauty from the outside.  I later learned that the building is now rarely open to visitors anyway, unless (ironically in my case) there’s a church service on, so I wasn’t missing out on too much there at least.

My walk then took me around the southern edge of Lake Tekapo westwards, towards the Tekapo Springs – also more on that later.  Lake Tekapo is the third of a trio of ribbon lakes from west to east, carrying glacial meltwater from the stunning snowcapped mountains of Mt Cook and its neighbours.  Along with Lakes Ōhau and Pukaki further west, it empties its water out into the large and braided Waitaki River to the south, before winding its way to the Pacific Ocean to the east.  All three lakes are stunning beauties, whose attraction is greatly added to by the rising backdrop of a horizon just filled with mountains.  This was to my mind the classic South Island scene that I was so looking forward to seeing.

Just before the Springs, I began the hike up Mt John which my accommodation owner had suggested to me.  It was a hard hike, with an elevation gain of 300m up this 1,031m high mountain, and I spent all 45 minutes of the climb huffing and puffing – I’m not as young (or as fit!) as I used to be.  But boy was it worth it.  With amazing 360° views all around on the sunniest of days, and nary a cloud in the sky, the entire landscape was filled with blues, greens and whites, and included Mt Cook again in the far distance, along with countless other snowcapped peaks in all directions.  This was quite simply New Zealand in all its glory!  The walk back down was really quite hard on my (old man’s!) knees, and thus what better way to end this day and this short and sharp hike, than to head for a few hours’ soaking in the hot pools, steam room and sauna of the Tekapo Springs back down at ground zero.  This really eased the aching bones and muscles for me!

As mentioned, Tekapo is also famous for its dark skies and stargazing at night, particularly at the top of Mt John where there are hardly any human lights for miles and miles around, and where the University of Canterbury in Christchurch has its astronomical research laboratory to learn more about the phenomenon of outer space.  Many visitors to the town visit its Dark Sky Project museum, and also go on a stargazing tour at night.  I was satisfied with just looking up while walking in and around town in the evening, and considering that the best time to see the stars is usually around 3am when I prefer to be all tucked up in bed, I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything.  While the sky and stars I did see were certainly beautiful, I don’t think anything will ever come close to the night sky I once saw around 20 years ago during time I spent in the wild reaches of northern Kenya, when there was literally more star than sky, and the Milky Way was stridently visible too.  Still, walking back to my accommodation along the lake shore, with the dark waters topped in the distance with the snowy mountains reflecting the moonlight, and the twinkling stars lighting up the dark sky above, this place certainly wasn’t too shabby and I wasn’t complaining!  I also felt all light and fluffy after my hot spa session, so ended this day with that wonderful feeling I often get when I’m travelling, being in my travel element, my happy place, my natural habitat once more!

The next day was my full day in the Tekapo region, and as with pretty much every day on my trip so far, it was amazing!  It was a full day of hiking in the glorious Mt Cook National Park.  I had booked a shuttle bus tour that takes its pundits from Tekapo to various hiking start points, and then picks you up again.  It was quite an amazing little operation, as you get to choose which hikes you do, depending how far and how taxing you want your hike to be, then arrange with the driver to drop you and pick you up at the right places.  This, with eight of us in six separate entities, can’t have been easy to achieve, but it worked, and I was impressed with it.

Our driver-guide was intriguingly a Japanese fellow who had lived in the area for quite some time – his accent was strong, and I didn’t expect at all to hear a Japanese accent telling me about the wonders of the Southern Alps.  He was a fantastic guy called Mr Ban, and I think I did the respectful thing by calling him Ban-San, but now I’m not too sure…

We first stopped off at various view points along the way to the Mt Cook National Park, and then its tourist hub Mt Cook Village for a bit.  I was again really fortunate with the weather, with clear blue skies all day – apparently it is only one in three days that the visitor can view Mt Cook.  I was so pleased to have travelled all this way, literally to the other side of the world, to be able to view the impressive jagged peak of New Zealand’s highest mountain, standing a mighty 3,724m above sea level.  It was also fascinating to see the various artefacts, memories and displays dedicated to legendary Kiwi Sir Edmund Hillary in the Village, as Mt Cook had become his practice mountain before he became the first man to conquer Mt Everest in 1953.  In actual fact, he was one of two – little is known of his Sherpa-guide Tenzing Norgay, and fascinatingly while we there, a film crew was in town filming an upcoming film about the latter chap’s life.  It is called “Tenzing”, starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe, and I had learned about it from a fascinating talk with a member of the film crew back in the Tekapo Springs the evening before. This chap had also worked on the LOTR films, and I have since spotted his name on one of the film’s end credits!

My first hike was to the Tasman Glacier and Lake, with stunning views over the green waters and bits of ice that had broken off the glacier further up the valley.  Then I did one to a place called Kea Point, for wonderful views over Mueller Lake towards Mt Cook itself in the background.  Finally, I headed up the Hooker Valley as far as the First Swing Bridge over the Hooker River. Just as I was reaching the end of this hike, I heard a rumbling in the far distance, and actually witnessed an avalanche down the side of one of the mountains! I was even able to catch this on camera – wow!

All was just amazing, and the group was great – I particularly enjoyed meeting and talking to a fellow-teacher travelling couple from Hong Kong.  They had gone out at 3am that morning after the moon had set, and showed me a photo of the night sky at that time over the Church of the Good Shepherd, with indeed more star than sky!  They had essentially captured the quintessential photo of these parts, and well done them!  It seems the moonlight has a negative effect on the amount of stars you can see at night.  I did have a look at the sky around 5am during a toilet trip in the middle of the night, but didn’t see such amazing stars then.  I was certainly glad still to have gotten a good night’s sleep instead.  I am no night owl.

It had been a really great day, and I enjoyed settling into my cosy cabin once more for the evening, with aching legs and feet, but a cosy and satisfied feeling.  The next day I was heading to my final stop on this New Zealand section of my “Around the World in 40 Days” adventure.  I was beginning to recognise that my trip would shortly be taking on a very different flavour as I was heading deep into the South Pacific.  More of course on my final travels in the land at the bottom of the world in my next!