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Published: November 29th 2008
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Church of the Good Shepherd
According to our bus driver, this is a favoured subject for photos, particularly by the Japanese. Lake Tekapo is a tiny place set among pine trees on a beautiful lake with brown hills rising to peaks still cloaked in the remains of winter snow. The lake, like others in the region, is turquoise thanks to glacial flour. Glaciers have ground the rocks into a powder as fine as flour, which hangs suspended in the water to reflect sunlight. Because of the size of these particles, it's the turquoise band of the spectrum that's reflected out of the lake.
The community consists of a few stores along the highway, a couple of hostels and motels and a handful of houses. It's principal raison d'etre today seems to be to live off backpackers and a few other tourists. It's a stop along the way to somewhere else, but a pleasant one.
At 3 754 metres, Mt. Cook is New Zealand's highest peak and is only a 1.5 hour drive from Lake Tekapo. For Japanophiles, it's 22 metres lower than Mt. Fuji. I drove up there in a shuttle bus, following a canal that had been built for hydroelectricity. The shuttle driver, Allan Gash, told us that he's seen water-skiers on it, being pulled by cars. Illegal, so
perhaps even more fun for that reason.
Allan told me that Kiwis are “can-do” people who love the outdoors. Where others see obstacles, Kiwis find solutions. He also said that Maoris constitute about 17% of the population although there are no pure-blood Maoris left today. In principle they're free to seek professional and leadership roles in NZ, but often work in trades or as labourers. Like Canada's natives, they tend to be poorer but they're not automatically viewed as alcoholics and profligates. He added that their growing acceptance today has to do with a renewal of interest in Maori culture and a change of attitude among those of European descent that goes back 30 or 40 years, but didn't know why this had come about. One could venture that the older, British attitude of aristocratic superiority that is a leftover of colonial-era thinking is finally dying away and being replaced by a more purely democratic and meritocratic perception by and of the citizens of New Zealand.
We drove up a wide, flat-bottomed valley where hills became mountains and as we arrived at Mt. Cook the weather closed in. It began to rain steadily. Mt Cook is an even
smaller community than Lake Tekapo. You come here for the views, to do a little hiking or, if you're Edmund Hilary, you come to prepare yourself for Mt. Everest. If not, you come because you love to climb, although these mountains are made of greywacke, a kind of sandstone that crumbles a little too easily for some climbers. I don't climb and don't enjoying hiking on mountain trails in the rain so I stayed in the hostel all day.
In the evening I met Janet from Victoria in the kitchen while we were both preparing supper. She's lived in Australia for the past 10 years but is now on her way home to Canada and in being a long-term expatriate she reminded me of myself. She didn't yet know what she would do for a living upon her return and I could understand this clearly. Were I to return to Canada now, what would I do there to make my living? Would my international experience be seen as valuable in the job market or would my long absence be too great a liability for potential employers?
The following day the rain continued to bucket down with a strong,
Near Mt. Cook
Clouds moving in.... gusty wind pushing it past the mountains in sheets. I had planned to spend the day walking trails above the village and spend another night here, but changed my plans to return to Lake Tekapo.
At 16h00 Allan Gash picked me up with a dozen other passengers and we left soggy Mt. Cook behind, driving out into a clearing sky and bright sunshine. Laura from the Tongariro Crossing on the North Island had arrived, so we had dinner together that evening and planned a hike for the following day.
The morning dawned bright and clear and about 11h00 Laura came to my hostel and we left to climb nearby Mount St. John. It's a 1.5-hour walk to the top as we followed first a good gravel trail through pine forest, then a well-packed dirt one through grazing land with boulders here and there. On our right sat Lake Tekapo and beyond that stood worn brown hills. Beyond these stood snowy peaks. Rabbits, or hares, hopped here and there, white tails flashing. At one point near the top we came upon a troop of stone-grey sheep huddling together beside a grey boulder for shelter from the cool wind.
Here the skies are perhaps the clearest in New Zealand and Lake Tekapo projects insignificant amounts of light into the night sky, so the University of Canterbury has set up an observatory. For NZD 45.00 you can peer through the telescopes at midnight and see an amazing galactic display. In the northern hemisphere you look outwards towards the edge of the Milky Way. In the south you look inwards, so the view is much richer.
But we came here at noon, not at night, and enjoyed great views of Lake Tekapo and the mountains beyond including - frustratingly for me - rainless views of Mt. Cook. We sat at the Astro Cafe for a couple of hours in the sun, then took the steeper, 45-minute trail down to Lake Tekapo village. We cooked together again that evening and agreed to try and meet up in Christchurch as we were both going there, although on different buses.
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