2 - Campervan to Lake Tekapo

Our big adventure on the South Island of New Zealand was discovering the island by touring around in a campervan (think VW Vanagon). For unknown reasons, Kea upgraded us to a 4-berth motorhome.



It was lovely and brand new (which was a far cry from our 16-yr old yacht rental). After doing a bit of paperwork and an extremely quick overview of the operational part of the motorhome, we were off on our 10-day camping adventure. (The next 2 days we spent time in the manual trying to figure out how to do things like ignite the proprane hot water heater) The campervan had a manual transmission (hadn't thought about that before) and the gear shift was on the left hand side. Oh boy, Kathy was glad Steve was driving. It was a frying pan experience pulling out of the
parking lot into the Christchurch city traffic, not really knowing where we were going or how to navigate the roundabouts in the wrong direction (it's not just the water going down the drain that rotates backwards down there).

Once we got out of town, decreased traffic allowed the stress to subside where we enjoyed some scenery. We provisioned in Ashburton, then continued south through the Canterbury Plains. Because of the expected snow, Kathy decided we should inch our way along and get as far south as possible before the roads became impassable. Our goal was Lake Tekapo.

Just out of Christchurch, we discovered a feature of our campervan. The step sounds an alarm if driving when it isn't correctly stowed . However, with the bumps of the road, the step didn't stay tightly stowed and dropped a fraction of an inch causing the buzzer to sound. Every 10km or so, Kathy had to jump out of the campervan and give it a swift kick to get the buzzer to stop. Tiring of that , we tried to wedge things in place, with only slightly better success. Steve solved the
problem by removing the offending sensor. Engineers sure are handy to have around! The valleys were beautiful, brilliant green fields speckled with sheep and an occasional cow.

After a few hours of green fields, we rounded a corner, as we picked up some altitude, and had a breathtaking view of a glacial lake. The water was an unbelieveable blue. It was our first close-up sighting of the Southern Alps, as the mountains here are known. We made our way around the southern end of Lake Takepo and found our first Holiday Park (campground) where we spent the night. We had a nice view overlooking the lake.



We BBQ'd for dinner (we ate very well during this week). Our campervan had everything...an oven, a stove, microwave, fridge, heater and TV/DVD player (although we never used the TV). Because it was a 4-berth campervan, we had a huge double-bed above the driving cab and a sofa and dining area. It also had a toilet, basin and shower, much like the yacht had. We lived in luxury. That night it snowed just enough to dust the mountains, which made the morning drive beautiful as we moved toward Lake Pukaki.




Next to the holiday park was an Alpine Pools and Skating place. This area is a popular summer and winter holiday destination for Kiwis. There was also a trail head up to the top of Mt. John. If we didn't have so far to go the next day, we would have taken this 3-hr tramp to the cafe at the top of the mountain. We found out later that at the top of the mountain is the Mt. John Observatory -- the best observatory in the nation, famous for its star-gazing at night. Oh well, maybe next time.