The bluest lake ever and NZ's highest point

Trip Start Aug 07, 2008
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Flag of New Zealand  , South Island,
Sunday, December 14, 2008

finally, after a hot shower, a good meal with craig/nicole + kids, we jumped in our blue van (still not named) and headed down the gut of the south island for Lake Tekapo... Tekapo is very easy to describe.. "the bluest lake i have ever seen"... no joke. it's got this incredible blue that borders on turquoise... it has something to do with rock sediment in the water that is created by rock-on-rock relationship of a glacier that grinds out particles suspended melted glacier water... i was hoping the pictures would do it justice, but not fully.. it does give a taste of what it's like and even the pic is magnificent... eunice and i arrived here after a 4 hour drive... we only did a quick stop here, but i think we took close to 200 photos... its really really incredible.... a must see when in new zealand... there's also a church here.. The Church of the Good Shepherd. it's a tiny little place.. maybe fits 40 or 50 people.. but it sits on a small hill on the edge of a lake.. apparently, the wait list to get married here is like 2 years long! why you see it, you'll see why.

on the road again... this time, another 1.5 to Mt Cook, new zealand's highest peak. we didn't actually get to the peak.. we're not the mountain climbing type... but we did do a 4 hour hike called the Hooker Valley Track... AMAZING! beautiful scenery - you see glaciers, turquoise blue waters, incredible mountains and wonderful plant life... all with a crisp clean abundance of mountain air to breathe... it was cold chicken soup for the soul! the hike ends up at this like surrounded by glaciers and snow capped mountain peaks... the lake is so cold that there is ice in it.. check out the pics...

the night before the hike, we parked our van at a government campsite, cooked up some pasta for dinner and had a bottle of wine before going to sleep in freezing cold temperatures... inside the van, though, it was all good... i think my excess of gas had a warming effect on the enclosed quarters of our van... (maybe blue flame could work as a new name!)
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Comments

daegunchang
daegunchang on Dec 19, 2008 at 04:38PM

Warm van huh?
I'm sure it got pretty warn in the van. Hope you guys had curtains on the window.

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