I woke up around 7 and still wasn’t too sure on how to fill the day. I pulled myself out of bed around 800 and decided to walk up mount John’s first, and then maybe ride onto the next lake after that.
The mount John summit circuit leads up to the mount John observatory, some 300 meters above the lake Tekapo. That makes it about a 100 meters higher than mount Victoria in Wellington. The track leads through the pine forrest and as it was still quite early I beat the heat and prevented walking on a track congested with tourists, so it was nice and quiet. I made it to the the top relatively fast and with relative ease. Views were definitely worth it, and best thing was that there was a cafe on top, so I could have a nice breakfast :-)
After breakfast I had to make my way down and took the longer walk along the lake’s shore back to the town. All in all it was about a 12k hike, which justified my burger at lunch and my elaborate three course dinner in the evening :-)
After the walk I stranded at the cafe of the the Tekapo springs, which had a nice sunny terrace and which had a nice view. There I had my lunch, read my book, did some writing and had a round of fights over the phone with KLM and Singapore airlines to arrange seats for my flights back home and to make sure that my bike would be allowed to come back home with me. Not the best holiday past time.
I never got on the bike, but it was a nice and lazy day. The weather seems to be declining a bit during the next couple of days, so hopefully I’ll be able to catch a glance of Mount Cook tomorrow!
On top of the world :-)
Definitely worth the hike!
...
Looking down on where I came from...
The observatory
Snowy mountains at the background...
Definitely worth it
Crazy ducks keeping me company during lunch 😂
