Lake Tekapo

[Sarah posting:] After a quick lunch at the Tasman Glacier, we made tracks for our next stop - Lake Tekapo.  Aside from being not too far a drive after the morning's hiking, it also features an observatory about which the Lonely Planet is extremely enthusiastic.  The observatory has a cafe (the Astro Cafe) that is reportedly "... quite possibly one of the planet's best locations for a cafe."  How could we not check that out?

The observatory is atop Mt. John, which looks like a small hill but technically rates as a mountain at just over 1,000 metres (it looks like a hill because it rises from Lake Tekapo, which is at 700 metres).  The views of the plains below are pretty stunning.

A company called Earth and Sky runs two hour tours on the mountain every night at the low, low price of $125 a person.  Despite our desire to see the southern skies, given the length of the tour, their no-cancellation for weather policy, the fact Australia and NZ are draining our bank accounts, and that the quality of the tours was dubious, we decided not to partake.  Chad did poke his head in and take a look at one of the telescopes, though.  Practically the same thing...

[Note from Chad: the stargazing tours say that you'll get to look at stars with your own eyes (yay...), binoculars, and a couple of small telescopes - with a chance you'll get to see something through a 16" telescope at some point, which is a decent size.  So these aren't exactly huge telescopes, and the tours are pretty short as they include one hour of transport up and down the hill, and you're sharing with several others on the tour... and more importantly, you aren't allowed anywhere near the bigger research telescopes.  Boo!  In Victoria, BC, for a relatively small price, you can get a talk from a research astronomer, including images taken in realtime from a very large (1+ m) telescope.  So I did my own naked-eye observing from the campsite.  Even found the southern cross without a star chart!]

After a ginger beer at the Astro Cafe (a pretty damn nice spot for a coffee, but probably not the best on the planet), we headed back down to our lakeside campsite for Chad to take a (very, very) refreshing swim in the practically glacial lake.  Icing his muscles from our Mt. Cook endeavours!

That evening we held our own star gazing tour beside Hal.  The sky down here really is amazing; the Milky Way features prominently.  [Note from Chad: it's really great to finally see the southern sky.  It's way better than the northern sky, except for its lack of a pole star.  Starting at Orion, it's a big strip of bright stars and milky way that extends almost from horizon to horizon.  My first childhood love after music was astronomy, so this was pretty cool to see.]  It is weird, though, not to see the Big Dipper in the sky!  The next day we would keep moving on, so bedtime after that.