South Island Day 5 : 28 March 2018
Fine, cloudy, 24•C
Up at 6:30am to a clear sky ( after another windy night ), I headed up a small hill ( Foliage Hill ) to get a view of the sun hitting the tops of Mt Cook and the Aroarokoeke Range ( Mt Sefton to Mt Copeland ). The sun rose, shone gold light on the mountains, so I took some photos.
Back down to the camp, found Liz wandering around in the grass, then to the van and had some breakfast at 9am. Packed up and left at 10am
We drove back down the side of Lake Pukaki and then south on SH8 to Twizel. We grabbed some supplies at the supermarket ( mainly beer, wine and chocolate ) and then filled the van with water, and emptied the grey waste tank. We had a wander around the town centre of Twizel, and we were impressed. Twizel now seems to be a centre / gateway for the Mackenzie region, and has all the amenities needed ( except any sockets at the library to charge our devices! ). We drove around the streets of Twizel then onto the canal that runs from Lake Pukaki to Lake Ruataniwha, and back to SH8 just south of the Mt Cook turnoff, then headed to the Lake Pukaki visitor centre to sit in the carpark and have our croissants with ham and cheese at 1pm
After lunch we headed for the east side of the lake and drove about 3km along the shore to the point where the canal from Lake Tekapo enters the lake, and drove up to have a look at the canal. We then headed back down and camped next to the Tekapo B power station. The area between the power station and the main road ( SH8 ) is all a free camping area, and we were joined in our area by a few other vans, but there was plenty of space.
We broke out the chairs, the coffee, the beer and sat in the sun for the rest of the afternoon. All afternoon the clouds looked like would yield a nice sunset for our view of Mt Cook, but it got cloudy to the west near sundown so nothing happened. We had tea and relaxed in the van, with nice quiet, calm, conditions outside.
