Every day in New Zealand is more beautiful and interesting than the day before, to the point where it's almost overwhelming. After we left Duvacuhelle (sob!) we drove to Fairlie, which is near Lake Tekapo in the center of the South Island. We had wanted to spend the night on Lake Tekapo, but because of the holiday weekend every single room in the town was booked well in advance. We got the last room in Fairlie, which is about a half-hour drive away. The Fairlie hotel was actually quite fun; it's on top of a bar, like inns back in the old days. It had tiny and adorable little rooms, and the town was cute.
Lake Tekapo was BEAUTIFUL. The lake itself is a truly stunning color, because glaciers melt into it and the particles from them show up as an incredibly vivid blue. However, it is particularly known for having beautiful views of the stars, because the weather is almost always clear and cloudless there. The weather turns out to be just as perfect as we were led to believe; it was cloudy and raining in Fairlie, but we turned a corner on our drive and had arrayed before us a beautiful plain, completely clear of clouds, with a mountain range in the background. I regret not stopping for a picture then, but here is a picture we took the next day with the mountains somewhat obscured by clouds.
We had breakfast in the hotel that morning, and met a Swiss girl who cautioned us that our New Years Plans were going to be a bust. We are spending it in Oamaru (where I write this now), and when I told her that her reaction was “WHAT? Nothing happens there, it's horrible.” Apparently she and we have very different priorities because Oamaru has been one of the absolute best places we've visited so far-- stay tuned for more info. (Foreshadowing!)
We left Fairlie and drove past Lake Tekapo again, on our way to Mt. Cook. We passed Lake Pukaki on the way, which is another lake in the chain along with Lake Tekapo and Lake Ohau. As we drove we couldn't help pulling over a few times to take pictures of Lake Pukaki with Mt. Cook (the tallest mountain in New Zealand) in the background. Look at this!
We got a beer at the hostel and had some dinner, and then dragged our aching bones out on another hike to have a view of the Tasman Glacier, which is also at the base of Mt. Cook. This hike was much shorter but more intense- at one point, we thought we had lost the path but that was just because we needed to climb a moraine wall. (Moraine is rocks and debris that glaciers leave in their path when they retreat; basically, we climbed a big rock wall.)
On the top of the wall, we looked over on a beautiful lake, with the glacier at one end and Mt. Cook and other mountains in the background. (The glacier is what looks like dirt on the left edge of the lake here; it extends all the way up that valley.)
The next morning, we got up early again and started to make our way towards Oamaru, with a few amazing stops along the way. The road from Mt. Cook to Oamaru goes through the Waitaki Valley. It's a particularly interesting place, because the valley has a lot of limestone under the surface. It's a place where you can find a lot of interesting geologic features, as well as a lot of fossils.
We stopped first at the Clay Cliffs, which is along a private gravel road. From the outside it just looks like a big rock wall, but you can walk into it and see views like this one: