7th March 2004
Hi, welcome back to our web log. We've just come back from a wonderful weekend in McKenzie Country. The picture to the left was taken by Gabriel at Godley Resort Hotel in the township of Lake Tekapo.
We decided some weeks ago that at the first opportunity we would head for Twizel. New Zealand has been rained out for weeks now and it was a delight to see the sun again this weekend. We packed up the car and headed off midday on Saturday.
The country around Twizel is where the Pellinor fields scenes were filmed for Lord of the Rings. To the south of Twizel, around Arrowtown are the locations of the backdrops for Isengard and the Ford at Bruinen where the Nasgul are washed away.
We headed south on highway 1 to Timaru. By the time we reached the turn off to Twizel and Mt Cook it was raining again. The flat of the Canterbury plains quickly gave way to green hills and grey mountains. We passed through some lovely little towns including Pleasant Point and Fairlie. The rain seemed to get worse and Marisa was a little disappointed at how little we could actually see.
We were both truly delighted and surprised as we went through Burkes Pass and broke out into perfect sunshine and cloudless skies. Ahead of us was the landscape of the Pellinor fields and mountains with snowy peaks.
Marisa stepped out to take this picture, our first impression of MacKenzie country. While this photo looks calm it was actually incredibly windy on this side of the pass but that improved as we got closer to Lake Tekapo.
We tried unsuccessfully to get some good photos of some the cloud formations that we saw. The clouds hung very close to the tops of the mountains and flowed over them in places.
We continued onwards to Lake Tekapo which so enchanted Marisa she insisted that we find accomodation for the night before continuing the extra 50 kilometres to Twizel. We booked into Godfrey Lodge and were amazed to find that our "budget" accomodation had a magnificent view onto the lake.
There were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The main bedroom had a very large window so the lake is visible from the bed.
In the photo you can see a small church at the lake's edge and a tongue of fog drifting down over the hills behind it. This was practically the view from our room (a little to the right actually).
You can click on this image to get a full size version.
Having secured accomodation we decided to do the extra 50 kilometres and head to Twizel. We had probably already had our fill of beauty but since Twizel had been our planned destination we thought we should follow through and go have a look. We didn't actually expect to see anything to match what we had already found in lake Tekapo.
How wrong we were. We were driving along (singing along to Crowded House) when we came around a corner and saw Lake Pukaki with the magnificent Aoraki Mr Cook behind it. Once again New Zealand had exceeded all expectations. We stopped for Marisa to get a photo. We seemed to be driving from one postcard to the next.
One thing that I never seem to get used to is the colour of the lakes we find. The blue is very distinctive in these mountain lakes. The photos don't really do it justice. It is a lighter, brighter blue than I am used to.
Twizel was a little unexpected. There seemed to be street after street of identical houses. Twizel was built in the 1970s to house workers building the nearby hydro electric dam at Lake Pukaki.
It was lucky that we had secured accommodation at Lake Tekapo since Twizel was booked out for a rowing event. Have I previously mentioned that Kiwis are mad about sport? We stopped and had a bite to eat before heading back to Lake Tekapo.
Back at Lake Tekapo we had a meal of fish and chips. We then went for our walk to the little church. There is also a memorial to the Collie dog over there. Marisa chased rabbits along the shore trying to get them to pose for the camera. After that we headed for bed. From our bed we had an unobstructed view of the full moon rising over the mountains and the lake.
We made up our minds that night that rather than heading down to Arrowtown to see Isengard scenery we would head to Aoraki (Mount Cook) instead.
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