Don't adjust your monitor colour, this is real!

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Our 2nd last day gives us another day of sunshine and scattered clouds especially around the mountains. We're packed up and checking out of our motel room at 10am. Thankfully as we head away from Mt Cook Village the sun is still shining and we have excellent views of Lake Pukaki and back to Mount Cook.

As you'll see from the photos Lake Pukaki is a brilliant blue. This is because it is a glacial fed lake and the blue is as a result of rock flour. Rockflour is sediment caused when the lake's basin was gouged out by the glacier with rock-on-rock action grinding out fine particles that end up being suspended in the water. The sediment gives the water a milky quality and refracts the sunlight hence the brilliant colour.

It is a beautiful dirve along the lake and as we round the southerly end there's yet more photo opportunities. :-) Interestingly there are 2 canals from Lake Pukaki. One going to Lake Ohau another to Lake Tekapo. They are 15 kilometres or more long each and are for the purpose of hydro-electricity.

On to Lake Tekapo and the Church of the Good Shepard. The Church is set in a postcard-perfect setting and is a favourite for nuptials being booked 2 years in advance. Bus load after bus load of tourists rock up and spoil the view let alone the peace. We're surprised it's so accessible thinking that it was a distance from town and a reasonable walk to get to. But no, it's within very easy reach. We decide to have lunch on the lakefront admiring the beauty.

The rest of our drive to Christchurch is reasonably uneventful as we head through the Southern Canterbury Plains. Oh except that immediately after we leave the mountains it starts coming in very grey and rains. The Plains are all paddocks, some with animals, some with crops of who knows what. Surprisingly the crops have irrigational systems. We wouldn't have thought they'd need it with the rain but some paddocks have systems almost a kilometre long. We count 28 sections on one crop!

We arrive into Christchurch in peak hour but Susan does a fantastic job navigating us to the Quest Apartments (yep, same place we started out at). Our last night deserves a celebration so we head back to Dux De Lux and as usual it is packed full. How surprising that a vegetarian and seafood restaurant does such amazing business. Maybe it's go to do with the home made beers, maybe Kiwi's are just more conscious about what they eat (and drink).

We have a couple of drinks and 2 gourmet pizzas. Mmm!!! And then we head back as we have to pack ready for our flight home and I have to "blog" to keep you all reasonably up to date with our adventures.

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Photos

Our Motel Room
Photo of the inside of our room at Mount Cook!

Heritage Luxury
This is a shot of the restaurant area of the Heritage Hotel. We had breakfast in this section. You can see the other accommodation behind. All have great views of Mt Cook - when the cloud lifts!

Lake Pukaki to Mount Cook
A view along the shoreline of Lake Pukaki to a cloudy Mt Cook.

Lake Pukaki
A view from the end of Lake Pukaki. Yes, the colours were really like this!

Canal to Lake Ohau
Visually impressive let alone amazing engineering.

Church of the Good Shepherd
There's very few times you can avoid getting another person in your shot. I had to wait 10 minutes for this shot.