{"id":2286,"date":"2017-11-23T19:27:20","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T19:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/?p=2286"},"modified":"2026-09-27T21:08:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:08:06","slug":"stop-25-lake-tekapo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/stop-25-lake-tekapo\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop #25: Lake Tekapo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lake Tekapo is known to have one of the darkest night skies in the world, and we were lucky enough to enjoy a cloudless sky that night. A popular spot to stargaze is near the picturesque Church of the Good Shepherd, which stands atop a hillock overlooking the lake. Unfortunately the night was not so serene nor dark due to the blinding headlights from the constant parade of tourists driving up to the church.<\/p>\n

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The town is also well known for its beautiful fields of lupins, where just outside of town we stopped by a river to take some photos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As beautiful as they are, they’re actually not native to New Zealand and are an invasive species.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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These lupins, which bloom between November and February, range in colour from blue to purple to pink to white.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Tekapo River is a glacial river, which is why it has such a beautiful turquoise colour. The effect is caused by “glacial flour”, which are small particles that are eroded from the glacier movement.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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There was a nice pedestrian bridge called the Maclaren Footbridge, making for a pleasant way to reach the Church.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Here’s another shot from the bridge itself. A much safer way to cross than the other bridge, where you’d have to share it with the vehicle traffic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Our wonderful Fernadette! We used this area to take some glamour shots of the van in preparation for our “For Sale” add in Christchurch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Across the lake we noticed an interesting cloud formation tucked away in the valley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Lake Tekapo, with the Southern Mountain Range on the other side. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe that high peak to the left is Mount Cook.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The Church of the Good Shepherd, where everyone congregates to watch the night sky.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We did indeed see a lot of stars, probably more if the car headlights from all the tourists didn’t blind us every 30 seconds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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A time lapse photo, which you can tell by the “shooting star” just off to the left of the center. It wasn’t actually a shooting star but a satellite. You can also see the constellation of Orion just below-right of center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We got up at 6:30 a.m. the following morning to take more photos of the church, hopefully without so many tourists in them. It turned out we had the place to ourelves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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It was so calm at that hour that the lake had a mirror-like quality to it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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If you ever visit Lake Tekapo, you may notice that you’re being watched by a dog on a hill, who is standing remarkably still. After several minutes, you’ll realize that it’s not a dog but in fact a statue of a dog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The statue is from The Sheepdog Memorial, which was built to commemorate the border collies who helped the Scottish shepherds herd sheep in the area.
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This is a close to a mirror as you can get! Had those ducks in the distance been closer, they could’ve ruined the mirror with their paddling. Instead they added to the tranquility of the scene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lake Tekapo is known to have one of the darkest night skies in the world, and we were lucky enough to enjoy a cloudless sky that night. A popular spot to stargaze is near the picturesque Church of the Good Shepherd, which stands atop a hillock overlooking the lake. Unfortunately the night was not so … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Stop #25: Lake Tekapo”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-south-island","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2286"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2329,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions\/2329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}