Driving solo in lengths and breadths of this beautiful country called NewZealand is nothing short of a heavenly experience. Pretty landscapes, decent amenities, warm people and best, lack of mobile network in quite some areas! It helps one getting detached with the mundane life and get closer with mother nature.
So in the second leg of my 15 days trip to NZ, I had flown into Christchurch (south island) after an exhaustive north island and was excited to explore the proverbial ‘more exotic’ island amongst the two. 195 destinations had me plan the road trip to Tekapo directly from Christchurch with 2 night stays there. After some 5 hours of driving with photography halts in between, I reached the place. It was 9 pm in evening and still the sun was about to set creating all kind of beautiful hues in the sky.
NZ is rich with lakes like Tekapo and Taupo and Pukaki and so on. One has to choose carefully. While researching, Tekapo and Pukaki had caught my attention mainly because of the divine sky blue water colour (because of freshly melted glacier) that is a rarity elsewhere in the world, also, its in the foothills of Mt Cook (Aroaki national park) which provides a lot of day hikes for trek-enthusiasts. After a good night rest, I started driving towards Mt Cook which turned out to be the most scenic drive of my life. For maximum length of the drive, the road just runs parallel to this sky-blue coloured, unadulterated water of lake pukaki with Mt Cook range on horizons and vistas change incredibly beautifully. Soaking in all the beauty, I finally reached the Mt Cook foothill where a plush hotel, restaurant and Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre is situated.
Weather was harsh, almost touching 0 degree but having done a few high-altitude Himalayan treks, I was determined to do one in the southern Alps. Out of a few on offer, I chose the Hooker valley trek, gulped down a few energy bars, refilled my water and started walking in the direction. at the end of 3 hours, crazy winds, rains, chilling cold and severe exhaustion, I am happy to have made that decision of hiking in this foreign country. For many travelers, travelling is limited to staying in cool hotels and doing things other people have done there. Countries like NZ offer much more than that and if one is ready to get out of comfort zone a little, the travelling experience just goes a notch higher.
I returned to the beautiful stay of lake Tekapo from Hooker valley trek by evening, strolled around, visited Church of Good Shepherd and other local attractions, soaked my feet in freezing clear waters of lake Tekapo, rested a while and took the guided late night-stargazing tour by the Dark Sky Project at Tekapo in freezing cold with the beasty telescopes. Sighting Jupiter, rings of Saturn and other adjacent milkyway through those giant telescopes out in open at Mt. John observatory, I realized what I saw had taken few thousand years to reach me at that moment. Delving into the concepts of time-travelling, I came back to my stay and had the most content sleep!
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