Twizel to Tekapo

The next stop on my South Island adventure was Tekapo, which is only a 40 minute drive from Twizel. I took my sweet time getting there, taking a detour along the shores of Lake Pukaki toward Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park. The views were suitably dramatic.

I stopped off in a gorgeous mountain resort town to take some pictures.

You could occasionally hear the crack of ice falling off the glaciers far off in the distance.

There was another glacier down the road, so I continued on and went for a bit of a hike.

The Tasman Glacier, off in the distance, has retreated rather dramatically over the last few decades. In the 1980s, the ice stretched all the way to the point where I was standing when I took this picture.

The 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch didn't help the glacial melt, it shook loose an estimate 30-40 *million* tons of ice from the glacier.

The view back down the valley the other way wasn't entirely unimpressive, either.

On the way back down I took a detour to the Blue Lakes.  You will, of course, be scratching your head over the names of said lakes, given that, as seen below, they are a rather alarming shade of green.

Back when the ice of the glacier came to the the lip of the rocks above, these lakes were fed directly by glacier water, and they were, in fact, blue. Because the water was so cold and from such a pure source, nothing lived in it. These days, they are fed by rain water and home to algae, giving the lakes their new hue.

Not gonna lie, I half expected to see a swarm of orcs or Rohirrim come running through this valley.

I stopped again on the shores of Lake Pukaki to take pictures of the lupine that were in full bloom *everywhere* along this lake and Lake Tekapo.

On arrival in Tekapo, I checked into my hostel for the night and then went off in search of dinner. I'd heard good things about Kohan Japanese Restaurant, and was not at all disappointed. After some of the best sushi I had in New Zealand, I walked to the pools at Tekapo Springs for a nice soak overlooking the lake. I was then treated to a lovely sunset on my walk home.