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Day 8 started off with a gloomy and overcast sky. By the time we finished breakfast and headed out, it had started drizzling. Not ideal weather for a long drive from Christchurch to Lake Tekapo…

We’d originally planned to drive past Ashburton, Geraldine and Farlie to get to Lake Tekapo, but due to the heavy snowstorm a few days ago on June 12 (the deepest Canterbury had seen since 1945…power was cut to more than 10,000 homes, some of them for up to 18 days), the road to Farlie via Geraldine to be closed! We were totally unprepared for this, so we ended up back-tracking to the i-Site centre at Geraldine to get new directions. The staff there were very friendly and organized and luckily, they had maps showing the detours we should take all printed and ready.

The landscape, or rather, snowscape was amazing…thick piles of snow covering rooftops, roads, pastures…we’ve never seen anything like it!

We followed the new directions and took a detour to Pleasant Point and Cave instead. And it’d obviously not snowed enough the day before, as along the way, it started snowing again and the outside temperature slowly dipped till our car thermometer showed a temperature of one degree! By the time we reached Godley hotel, it was alternately drizzling and snowing…what absolutely dismal weather! Add to the fact that the hotel looked rather deserted…well, it certainly wasn’t a very warm (pardon the pun) welcome!

After carrying our luggage up to the first floor where our room was situated (ok, I just shouted to hubby to be careful not to slip on the stairs…he did all the carrying…*grin*), we took a short rest before heading out for lunch.

In need of some Chinese food, we settled on Jade Palace where we had sweet and sour fish, king prawns with seasonal veg and Chinese mushrooms with oyster sauce and chicken fried rice…so absolutely NOT worth the money we paid. But what could we do? That was the only Chinese restaurant around! Pfftt…

As the sky was still too overcast for photo-taking, we went back to the hotel to rest. I managed to finish a new storybook, hubby had his magazines and PSP so it was all good. By mid-afternoon, the snow and rain had stopped and the clouds were gone so we quickly put on our winter jackets and drove down to the Church of the Good Shepherd to take some photos. The church is one of the most photographed of New Zealand’s buildings as the altar window offers awe inspiring views of the lake and the famous Mt. Cook. Unfortunately, the church was closed when we arrived so we couldn’t take a look inside. I stayed outside as long as I could before quickly running back into the car…the wind was extremely strong and my fingers were so cold that it the joints were painful! Hubby, however, is made of much tougher stuff…hehe…and he even managed to walk to the nearby sheepdog memorial to take more photos!

Since we were already out, we decided to drive to the near-on-the-map-but-not-that-near-in-actual-fact Mt John Observatory…but whaddaya know? It was closed due to the bad weather! On our way back, the back tyres of the car got stuck in a patch of snow, and for a moment there, I really panicked, thinking that we would have to trek all the way back to the hotel (the road was absolutely DESERTED…no human, sheep, cow nor horse in sight!). Luckily, hubby did some nifty thing with the brakes and we got ourselves out of trouble and on the way back to the hotel in no time.

Dinner was at Kohan, a Japanese restaurant nearby (in fact, Lake Tekapo seems to consist of only one single street so everything was nearby!). I had chicken teriyaki don, hubby had green mussels and tofu soup and katsu don, and we both shared two scoops of green tea and one scoop of feijoas (don’t ask, I don’t know what it is!) ice cream which was very tasty. The waiter happened to be a free-lance photographer, and he showed us his collection of photos that he’d taken of Lake Tekapo. There were some taken during the solstice…I just thought how I’d love to be here when that happens again as the photos were so beautiful.

As we slowly walked back to the hotel after dinner, we glanced up at the sky above and was amaze to see how absolutely clear the sky was. Both of us just stood there, gazing at the stars twinkling and sparkling, breathing in the crystal clear and fresh air, just enjoying the moment. It was so quiet that you could literally hear a pin drop, and if it weren’t so cold, I think we could’ve just stood there just a little bit longer to take in the peace and beauty of the area. You really had to be there to experience it.