Welcome back to my New Zealand adventure. Last time I visited the Blue Pools and ended up jumping off a bridge (without injuring myself) into the freezing cold water.
This is a continuation of that same trip.
I didn't know what to call this blog, it's got so many twists and turns, ups and downs, wins and fails that I couldn't think of what to call it. So I've settled with the name of the road this journey takes place on. Route 8.
I was on my way to a place where I'd really wanted to visit since I heard about it in the south Island. I love a view if it's got mountains in the background, there's just something about it that grabs my attention. But like many road trips in New Zealand, the reality can go either way.
My first stop was yet another lake (I know).
It wasn't talked about in hostels, it wasn't mentioned in the best "go-to" spots. It wasn't even sign-posted, nor was there a car park to even stop in. But it WAS worth stopping.
After using my superior map reading skills and a bit of help from Google, I found out that this is in fact Lake Hawea
Like many places, the pictures don't do it justice.
But after heading a little further down the road, I found a really good spot.
As you can see, It was a cloudy and quite frankly, miserable day but for once I was actually glad there were clouds.
You see THIS is a mirror lake if ever I saw one, the water is dead still and the reflection is so clear, it made it seem like there wasn't a reflection at all.
See what I mean about the clouds?
There's a certain kind of earyness that you get from being in a place like this. It's just...weird
I took a short clip to capture the atmosphere which you can see here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/VTGAaTWSBgPb82Q17
Hopefully now you can see what I meant when I said pictures don't do it justice. Because of the clouds, some bits don't look like water at all. It just looks like a bottomless pit with smoke just sitting around covering up the depths below.
Or maybe that's just my imagination...
Either way it's a cool place :-)
Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what special activity I did whilst wearing this hoody!
Answer is at the end of the blog :-P
After a bit more driving, the scenery changed...
Dramatically!
Now again, perhaps it was the not so sunny weather that made this such an unusual atmosphere but you have to understand, I hadn't been climbing mountains or even hills to get here and there was no downward hill on the other side. In short I wasn't high up.
Perhaps it was just mist or fog, but you can see from the photo that it's just hanging in the air. I've never seen either do that. Visability driving was completely fine.
To me it looks like low clouds
I headed over between these two peaks which arn't that big and I could almost reach and touch the cloud
It's a very odd place to drive through, especially with no other cars. Dead silent. No birds, no wind, no tree's. Just this weird spongey moss stuff.
On the other side, you'll see the weather was still miserable but if it was a sunny day, this next pic would of been a good one.
Ignore the impatient locals
If you look on the right side of the picture, you'll see the low cloud, seperate from the rest.
Finally we reached the place that I really wanted to see:
Lake Pukaki and Mount Cook
Finally the place I'd been longing to see ever since I landed on the south Island. Unfortunately, the experience wasn't quite what I expected.
Despite the awful weather, I've never seen a such a blue lake before. I can understand on a nice sunny day but this was just unreal. How can it be that blue?!
There wasn't much time left in the day, so decided to get an early night and head for a nearby viewpoint to catch a glimpse of the mountains in the morning...
Nope!
Poor guy, he probably camped there days. But somewhere behind all that fog is a mountain range with New Zealands highest mountain. Mount Cook
Just to give you an idea, this is what it's like on a nice day.
yeh….
Image Source
Mount Cook
Here's what I should of seen approaching the lakes
Now obviously someone's probably edited these pictures to make them stand out and look nice in order to get more likes on their Instagram but even so, you can clearly see why I was disappointed...just a bit.
I knew it was pretty much pointless stopping at lake Tekapo despite it normally being another popular destination.
I think this is it? lol
To be honest, the weather was so bad I couldn't tell the difference :-(
With my hopes shattered I continued on my journey.
That night, I camped at a place called Caroline Bay in TImaru. It wasn't planned as I'd hoped to spend more time around Mount Cook and the two lakes nearby. But there was something special about this place.
It was one of the few places in New Zealand where penguins can be seen coming in and walking up to their little hidey holes. This reminded me of Phillip Island back near Melbourne- Australia.
But Phillip Island for me was a horrible experience. I very nearly got in a fight there from being pissed off at the tourists breaking all the rules and literally pushing me out the way to get photos. I remember walking up next to ONE penguin out of about 600 and a family were gathering near a group of 6 or 7 penguins. They were taking about 100 photos all with flash photography (which wasn't allowed) so the penguins went elsewhere.
There I was minding my own business and they see me and the poor little guy just trying to get home. They come running (yes literally running) over and one shoulder barges me out the way and starts taking multiple pictures. FLASH FLASH FLASH. Goodbye penguin.
Dumb idiots. I should of just elbowed him in the face.
Anyway rant over, back to Caroline Bay. This was COMPLETELY different. I think in total there was about 6 of us witnessing the penguins come in. Some were taking or videos photos but no flash. It was a really nice way to end the day.
Hello Mr Penguin!
The next morning I headed to Christchurch which at the time didn't know would be the last town I stayed in New Zealand and the end of my adventure :-(
By the way I mentioned earlier about the hoody I was wearing. Did you guess what activity it was?
Yep, skydiving. I tell you, that hoody has been through ALOT!
Anyway, that's the end of this road trip. There were good and bad moments but if you were to ask me if I'm glad I did it. It's a resounding yes!
Thank you, once again for visiting