We recently spent a long weekend in the beautiful surrounds of Lake Tekapo, in the heart of New Zealand's South Island. Find out where we went and what we did.
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| Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo |
To go away on a long weekend when you live in Auckland you have to be somewhat of a masochist. Given its geographical surrounds you can only leave the city to the north or the south. It's like the entire population of the city trying to squeeze through a narrow doorway all at once. The end result usually means frantic preparation to leave at a decent time and probably ending up in a lot of traffic somewhere anyway. You pretty much have to be 3 hours out of Auckland to avoid long weekend traffic. It’s gotten so bad that many people leave earlier and earlier to the point they are leaving on a Wednesday night to avoid the Friday afternoon rush out of town. Coming or going it's simply inevitable.
Having avoided for many years going anywhere or doing anything when I know everyone else is also going somewhere and doing something, it was a pure coincidence that we end up going away for Labour weekend - traditionally the long weekend that marks the start of good weather heading toward summer.
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| Lake Tekapo shoreline |
Seeing as though we are planning to leave New Zealand for Japan next year, it would be remiss of us not to take in some of the best that New Zealand has to offer. Tomomi has never been to the South island and experienced the stunning landscape that the country is known for around the world, and I haven't not been to the South Island aside from short business trips to Christchurch in over 20 years so I was excited at the prospect too.
We wanted the best chance of good weather which meant pushing as far toward summer as we can, but given our work gets increasingly busier on the approach to Xmas, we settled on Labour Weekend to avoid taking too much time off.
The plan was to Fly to Christchurch Friday morning, drive and stay in Tekapo for 2 nights before heading back to Christchurch and flying home on Sunday afternoon. With some leisurely sightseeing in between.
Find out how it went.
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| Lake Tekapo shoreline |
Not off to a great start
All of the previous week there was crazy weather down country, with very strong winds causing severe weather warnings across the lower part of the country. On the Thursday, the day before we were due to fly, all flights in the south island had been cancelled! We got lucky and were able to fly as the weather system had moved on. The luck didn't hold very long though, after buckling ourselves into our plane seats we were informed the plane needed a tyre change that would take an hour, which meant getting back off the plane and re-boarding later. I haven't been having a good run with flights this year, my last flight from Melbourne was cancelled, and now this delay was eating into our precious weekend!
Eventually we arrived in Christchurch an hour and a half late, and went to get our rental car from Budget rentals. We queued at the pickup desk for 40 damned minutes. Air New Zealand had recently introduced being able to book your rental car along with the flights and it seems a number of people had also done this, so whilst all the other rental car desks were empty, we were loosing yet more time. Finally we hit the road, over 2 hours behind schedule. This meant instead of arriving in Tekapo at lunchtime, it would be halfway during the afternoon, all but ruining the days plans.
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I haven't driven outside of Christchurch before, but I recall as a teenager when we came on holiday that the Dunedin to Christchurch drive was pretty boring. That would be an understatement. Driving across the Canterbury plains for 2 hours, on dead straight roads through dead flat farmland and featureless landscapes is something I would not wish upon my worst enemy. American readers right about now are probably thinking that's the equivalent to a trip to the shops for them, given their roads and I sympathize with them. Why someone would want to live in the Canterbury region outside of Christchurch is beyond me. There is simply nothing and if you want to get anyway, you have to drive for ages through yet more nothing…
Two hours later we eventually headed inland and the roads gradually got windier and the hills started getting bigger and bigger. After a while we found ourselves driving through tussock covered brown landscapes surrounded on all sides by brooding mountains covered in snow. Finally we entered Lake Tekapo village having just been greeted by the first sight of the bright turquoise coloured water of the lake, surrounded by snow capped mountains.
The plan was to arrive around lunchtime and have the whole afternoon to explore, but the delays in the morning meant we did not have a lot of the day left, so we went for a drive up the left side of the lake with the hope of going up to Mt St John Observatory, which is on a hilltop overlooking the lake. The road up the hill was still closed from the severe weather or they just wanted to start their long weekend early so we just found another view point further up the lake to take in the view.
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| Snow on mountain peak, Lake Pukaki |
Accommodation
Heading back into town we checked into our hotel, the Peppers Bluewater Resort. Our room was a 1-bedroom 2-story apartment with a full kitchen. Our room was a ‘mountain view room’ and had a balcony both upstairs and down which opened up to views of the little pond in the middle of the complex with a slither of a view to the lake and mountains beyond. The place was modern and tidy and there is a bar and restaurant onsite too, though we didn't use those.
Peppers is a convenient spot to stay. Tekapo village isn't big by any means, but 50m down and across the road is the Four Square supermarket for all your self-catering needs and beyond that all the bars and restaurants clustered together. Almost like they are all nicely packaged up to be a short walk-able distance. On the lake side of all this is a nice and expansive lakeside park, and across a footbridge is the famous Church of the Good Shepherd.
Early evening on both nights we were able to take a leisurely stroll around the lakeside park, go see the church and then find a meal. The choice of restaurants is pretty decent, it looks like there is something for everyone and across all budgets. We had stone grill meats the first night and then Thai and Japanese the second. Both were great and not outlandishly expensive by NZ standards.
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| Peppers Blue water Resort, Lake Tekapo |
Climate
One thing I’ll tell you is damn it was cold. A few weeks prior it occurred to me that perhaps I should check what the weather will be like, and although we are hitting 20s now in Auckland, Tekapo was showing highs of just 10C. Luckily we packed winter jackets as that was about what it felt like but with the added bonus of icy winds that were blowing rather hard and freezing! The humidity is also extremely low, in the 40% range during the day. Auckland is always humid even when it doesn't feel stuffy and muggy, yet we seem to be used to it as a couple of days in Tekapo and our lips had dried out something chronic!
The Night Sky
Lake Tekapo is located in what is known as a Dark Sky Reserve, and is renowned for being one of the best places anywhere to see the night sky in it's full glory. There are plenty of tours you can do but because it was so damned cold we didn't want to be out for long, so on the first night we did the 'we have stargazing tours at home' option of driving out of town and over the first hill (to block the light from town) and park on the side of a back road. It was true darkness. With every minute that passes your eyes adjust and more and more stars become visible. It is truly staggering just how many stars are out there. I've seen some good night skies before but this was something else.
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| Milky way over Lake Tekapo village |
Being a photographer I naturally wanted to try my hand at Astrophotography. I don't have any special Astro equipment as I may not use it again, so opted to just use what I have. And what I used was a Sony 24mm f/2.8 on a Sony A7CII camera, mounted on a mini tripod on the car roof that I had to stabilize by hand too because the wind was threatening to not just ruin my shots but to steal my camera too.
I manual focused to infinity and exposed for 15 seconds. I took a number of shots for redundancy whilst braving the icy winds - those 15 seconds each time felt like eternity! I was grateful to retreat to the warmth of the car, and Tomomi wanted to go to the Church. I assumed given its proximity to town that the Church would not be a good spot. Turns out it is a good spot, plenty dark enough but busy with people, even after 10pm. I hastily took some more shots and we retreated once more but this time to the warmth of our accommodations.
The shots seemed alright from looking on the cameras rear monitor, but when I got back to the room and imported them to the iPad I found they were all horrifically out of focus. Turns out that manually focusing all the way to infinity to the right of the scale doesn't work. You need to manual focus gradually and stop as soon as it stops displaying in meters and shows the infinity 8 symbol for the first time.
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| Stars over the Church of the Good Shepard, Tekapo |
The following night I went out alone to the church. The wind from the day before had subsided and it wasn't quite as cold thankfully. I took my time and did some experimenting with different exposure times and different ISO's. I can't tell you how frustrating it is though to just have hit the shutter on a long exposure and a car comes down the road with it's headlights illuminating everything, or someone walking around waving their phone torch everywhere. The shot is ruined and you have to wait for the long exposure to finish before you can start again. So it took a bit longer than expected to get the shots I wanted, and I'm largely happy with what I ended up with in single shots at my first attempts with a lens that is neither wide or fast enough for Astrophotography.
I even tried the new Viltrox 14mm f/4 but it was a bit too wide. 24mm was actually quite good, though not possible to get the milky way into one shot. 16mm or 20mm would be ideal I can imagine, and a lower f-stop means less ISO which means less noise.
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| Mt Cook and Lake Pukaki |
Lake Pukaki & Mt Cook
Rewinding back to Saturday, our first full day. We got up early and hit the road. The morning was nice and crisp and the air was fresh and clean. I had dismissed the planned driving for the day as relatively short hops to Lake Pukaki and Mt Cook, as they are just down the road on the map. I was mistaken - 30 mins just to the bottom edge of Lake Pukaki, and a further 45 minutes to Mt Cook village beyond the northern end of the Lake. This made the very cruisy day of leisurely gallivanting around the area and up toward Mt Cook a little tighter, with the total days driving exceeding two hours in total.
Lake Pukaki has no town or village on it's shores like Tekapo and it's similar to Tekapo but everything is amplified; It's surrounded by more mountains and they are larger, the water is bluer and it feels more remote due to the lack of settlements.
The road from Tekapo to Twizel skirts along the southern edge of the lake before you take a right turn to head up the left side. There are an abundance of spots to pull over and take in the stunning view across the lake with Mt Cook standing prominently square and centre in the distance, an absolutely glorious sight. We visited the Lake Pukaki Visitor centre, which to be honest isn't much, but in the same location is a Salmon shop. The area is famous for salmon farming, with a complex network of canals from Twizel through to Tekapo. We couldn’t pass up getting a few packs of Salmon Sashimi and eating on a bench overlooking the lake. That was some damn fine Salmon I must say!
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We drove back to Tekapo in one hit, giving our little girl a chance to catch up on sleep. We usually keep her on a steadfast schedule but we loosened up a bit whilst on holiday - you can't get much done if you have to work around an 11:30-1pm nap smack-bang in the middle of the day!
Back in Tekapo we popped into the little Petting Zoo situated next to our hotel. The place didn't look like much and our expectations were rather low, but our girl loves animals and we weren't going to pass up an opportunity to have her beaming with joy. Turns out it’s a guided tour. 'Oh' I thought, that doesn't sound like fun, and not at $20 each. Well actually it was. It was great. The host was lovely, and us and all the children got to touch animals up close including adorable lambs. We even went loose in a field of Sheep and Alpacas, and the sheep were often jostling our girl trying to get food which was quite amusing.
The day concluded with a nice dinner and me heading back out to do some more astrophotography that I mentioned earlier. All in all it was a great day, in stark contrast to the on-verge-of-disaster day previously.
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| Mountain valley near Mt Cook Village |
Checking out Christchurch
An early start to hit the road to get the painful drive across the Canterbury plains done and behind us was the plan. We got notified quite early that our afternoon flight had been pushed back an hour (third flight in a row with some type of issue) so we headed into the centre of Christchurch City for lunch and a walk around.
The city centre seems quite a contrast to even the last time I was there maybe 7 years ago. It is actually very nice, with lots of new things, from shops and markets to sports centres and parks. The whole place is flat as a pancake which is rather boring when you are used to the abundantly visible landmarks of Auckland, but there are so many nice green spaces and even a beach. The City is based around the Avon River seems to follow you wherever you go around the City, and along it's length are nice shaded park areas to walk. The City just has a really nice vibe. With time running out we headed back to the airport to fly home.
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Costs
Travelling in New Zealand is expensive. I can only imagine how much it costs nowadays for people visiting from overseas for a few weeks! It’s certainly one of the reasons we hadn't been to the south island in so long. I thought I would break down the costs of our trip to give you an idea, wether you are visiting from overseas or from within New Zealand:
2 Adults 1 infant, 2 night stay in Tekapo.
- Flights (AKL to CHC) $531 (return)
- Accomodation $784 (2 nights)
- Rental Car $603 (3 days)
- Fuel $130 (650km approx)
- AKL Airport parking $103 (3 days)
- Food $360
- Misc $70
- Total $2581
For a weekend away with everything done at a reasonably modest level, with no paid tours or anything like that it’s still quite steep. The alternative trip I had in mind was to take the Tranzalpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth via Arthur's Pass. The cost would have been similar, but perhaps not the best option with a baby due to lack of flexibility and things to see and do.
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| Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo, NZ |
Photography
I took my Sony A7CII Camera and mainly used the Sony 24-50 f/2.8 G. It's a quite excellent lens for standard focal lengths. To accompany it I also took the versatile Sony 70-200 f/4 II G to be able to pick out specific details within landscapes. I left the excellent Tamron 50-400 at home despite its amazing range and image quality as it's simply a bit too big and heavy to travel with for me.
I took the little G series Sony Primes too, with the 24mm f/2.8 being used for Astro and I didn't even use the 50mm as the 24-50 is just so good and still compact. Rounding out the camera bag was the new Viltrox 14mm f/4, a cheap ultra wide with a stellar reputation. I found it quite difficult to use though for landscapes as already distant mountains would appear much smaller. It's just too wide for that application and better suited to really tight spaces or urban areas where you are able to fill the frame almost on 3 sides for the dramatic perspectives that only an ultra wide angle lens can provide.
My biggest issue with travelling is not having a second body. With two main lenses every time we got to a view spot I would have to get all the shots I wanted with normal focal lengths then switch to the Telephoto to pull out some details. Rinse and repeat at every spot. A single travel lens would fix the problem but I don't want to compromise on image quality when Travelling - I already am by using Zooms over primes I suppose. The world doesn't wait for you to take your shots leisurely and change lenses when travelling with a family, especially if you still want some time to enjoy it with them too.
In closing
I hope you enjoyed seeing and reading about our weekend to one of the nicest spots in New Zealand. It comes highly recommended if you have the opportunity.
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