Tailor-Made-Tekapo Backpackers Christchurch

On my third and final day in Mt. Cook I begrudgingly opted for the popular Hooker Glacier Trail. Only a three hour round trip, the hike was certainly worth it with two large swing bridges and an iceberg filled lake lying at the feet of New Zealand's highest peak. The downfall of this trail is the volume of people on it. Most small groups, couples and solo hikers follow accepted trail etiquette; however, the large groups of guided Japanese tourists are truly a menace. Stopping every five feet ...

(Photos to follow... and they're ever so good! Lots of big mountains and stuff!!) Well, this is more like it. This is what we thought New Zealand would look like once we got into "mountain country" and the area around Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook hasn't disapointed us... the last 3 days have been fab. After doing pretty much nothing for months we've just done the most incredible 3 walks in the last 3 days. Legs are a bit sore and shakey now.... and we could do with finding one of these hot spri...

After leaving Wanaka we headed up to centre of the south island on the opposite side of the Southern Alps. I was feeling slightly disgruntled having been told that the cinema that Paul went to last night was actually filled with sofas and a big car in the centre for people to sit in. Even thought I didn't want to see the film it would have been good to have sat in a car to watch it.  We took a slight detour up towards Mount Cook Village to hopefully get a view of Mt Cook itself.  Unfortunatel...

Wednesday, February 7 Oamaru to Lake Tekapo Our drive today takes us to the scenic Mt. Cook and on to Lake Tekapo. We have a nice room at the Tailor Made Backpackers at Lake Tekapo.

Croft's Take: Lake Tekapo is similar to Kuranda in Australia in that it is really a one stop town. The tourist buses pull up near this old church near the lake, a pile of people pour out, start clicking off photos, and then pile back in and the bus pulls out, all in the space of about ten minutes. Only backpackers seem to stay. We stayed at Tailor-Made Backpackers and it was one of the best ones we have seen on the trip so far. The lake was and is still used for generating hydroelectricity bu...

We spent an extraordinarily pleasant few days staying at the Tailor Made Hostel in Lake Tekapo, set among lovely gardens and only a few minutes walk to the brilliant blue lake and the village. The colour is apparently caused by a rock flour which has a fine dust suspended in the water and catches the sunlight giving the amazing blue colour. You almost start to take this type of scenery for granted in N.Z as once again this place has exceptional beauty. I enjoyed a nice stroll up to the top of...

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! New Zealand is the most beautiful place in the world! We picked up our hire car and drove through some of the most amazing scenery via the incredibly blue Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki and saw Mount Cook (in the background anyway). We spent the night at a lovely quiet hostel on the shores of Lake Tekapo and took lots of amazing photos from Mount John, the shores of the lakes and the Mount Cook lookouts. Instead of describing what we saw, we've decided just to show you t...

So today was another indecisive start day. I was good and have gone back to camping, so I rose from my little blue tent and put everything in my little blue car, glad not to be wearing my little blue jumper because otherwise people might think I had a problem with other colours and you know no one likes to be considered to have a colour bias there are words for people like that.
Anyway after packing everything up, I ummed and ahhed, I really fancied biking skippers canyon, I’d s...

After yesterdays golf I’ve becoming a sports fanatic, well almost, well not really in fact but I did today play tennis. Well I ran around a tennis court waving a racket randomly trying to hitting a tennis ball over the net to Jovana, who occasionally hit it back.Honestly it was like Wimbledon except I was wearing jeans, Jovana was wearing flip-flops (Jandals), neither of us were any good, there was no strawberries or cream and we were in NZ but aside from that it was just like Wimbledon...