Wanderlust + Highway Dust

February 18

The drive from Akaroa to Geraldine through the Canterbury Plains was the equivalent of a Midwest road trip minus the snacks. Sorry if I offend you Midwesterners but it wasn’t too exciting.

We did run into one apparently traditional NZ roadblock that caused us a slight setback.

Once we made the turnoff towards Geraldine though, it got a whole lot prettier.

We stopped for lunch in Geraldine, an adorable little village at the foot of the Southern Alps.

Once again, I enjoyed my go-to lunch: smoked salmon salad, this time at Barker’s. We walked around and stretched our legs after our long drive, and then headed to Fairlie, a town about 40 minutes away.

The Fairlie Bakehouse came highly recommended by many locals and travel websites as THE place for savory pies. The line outside on Sunday afternoon at 3 pm was evidence of its popularity.

Since we had just eaten lunch, we weren’t hungry, so we got a few pies to go to eat over the next few days. Mitch and I couldn’t resist sharing a mini lemon meringue tart, which was delicious.

Three Creeks in Burkes Pass is a retro stop plucked from a 1950’s service station with gas pumps, rusted classic cars and old farm machinery. It was just down the road and on the way to Tekapo so we made a quick stop and took some fun pictures.

We finally arrived, tired after a long day of driving (co-piloting is hard work) at our little studio at Lake Tekapo for the next few days. The scenery here is stunning. The glacier water is an incredible turquoise blue, basically glacier dust, that is made when the glaciers move down the mountains, grinding rocks as they go. The glacier then carries the rock dust down to the lake where the ice melts. The powder remains suspended in the lake water, giving it a turquoise hue. It’s a shame the color can’t be properly captured in the photos.

Tekapo is part of the UNESCO Dark Sky Reserve. It’s known as one of the best places in the world for star gazing because of its wide open vistas with no light pollution. At 10pm, we jumped in the car in our jammies and drove outside of town a few miles, away from town lights. The stars were amazing. We hope to see even more tomorrow night at our Dark Sky Project experience atop Mt John.