Lake Pukaki

We left Twizel, but did not actually get very far that day. Just outside of Tekapo is a NZ Army Base – what a bleak area that would be in the depths of winter. Waiouru in the North Island would be no different, so maybe the army uses places like this to weed out the weak.

The road out of Tekapo goes through steep hilly areas, with Mount Mary out to the right and the Tekapo River to the left. It is no more that 30km down the road that the hillsides clear and the road travels alongside Lake Pukaki, which is a big fresh water lake at the base of Mount Cook. Again it was a cloudy day, so Mount Cook might not have been there for all we knew.

We had to stop at the first lookout we came to, and took a few photos, but the second lookout appeared to be a freedom camping site, so we decided we would stop there for a night. We were only the fourth van there but finding a level parking spot was a bit of a problem. In the end we parked at the end closest to the road going further down to the lakeside, and parked parallel to the fence.

The Parking area also ran alongside a cycle / walking track which seemed to be quite popular – lots of people out enjoying the holiday weekend.

We took a few walks with the dogs along this track and wandered down to a beach we could see further on. It was all gravel, so not easy walking, but even so, it was nice.

The only negative about the park occurred when an NZMCA member decided to park no more than a metre in front of our front bumper and less than a metre from a van parked on the otherside. When he pulled up Bruce asked him if he was seriously going to park there, to which he responded that he was. Most NZMCA members know they should leave a space of about 3 metres between vehicles for safety reasons, but I guess he felt that as this was a freedom camp, those guidelines did not apply.