Tuesday 6th February – Collecting the Black Sheep and star gazing in Tekapo Springs.

We went for a speedy breakfast to return and check-out of the hotel for 10am. 

Then we got another free pick-up, this time from ‘Happy Campers’ our next van hirers.  What can we say about our new camper, the Black Sheep?   

We got the cheapest vehicle we could in the circumstances, so maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that the van is ‘well-used’.  Like when we collected Ozzie in Perth, there is so much damage on the body they would be hard pushed to prove we are at fault for any of it!  It’s done over 300,000 km, we are definitely now no longer ‘self-contained’ and the rear windscreen wiper was on backwards so that it was wiping the number plate instead of the glass!  That was quickly fixed and we were on the road.

We are enjoying the fact that we have had a South Island itinerary created on our behalf by an ex-colleague from the UK, who moved here following retirement with his wife.  Nick and Chris have recently moved from the North island to Nelson, at the north of the south island, where we shall be visiting them soon.  Having spoken to them from Sydney over Christmas and given them our tourism wish-list, they have provided us with a detailed itinerary showing the route, journey time and distance between locations. How lazy are we?  This is such a relief, saving us from hours of research, having to make decisions on a route, deciding how far to travel in a day and importantly, ensuring we don’t drive past any of the important things to see!  Amazing, many thanks to the Edwards!!

So, having got our eighth set of wheels this trip (at last count) and done the obligatory grocery re-stock, we stopped for a coffee and consulted our itinerary to see where the day would take us.  We also got busy booking ahead, with the knowledge of when and where we would be in relevant places.  There is a very handy site called bookme.com which we have used a few times now to snap up the last few cheaper tickets for attractions.  If you are willing to reach places earlier in the day or later than most, you can bag a bargain.  For example, we are going on the very sought-after ‘Shot Over Jet’ on Friday, but at 815 in the morning now, as there were two seats left for $30 cheaper than normal.  Useful. 

For today, we were to head for Lake Tekapo where we had previously booked ourselves a night’s star-gazing in a dark-sky reserve.  The issue this morning was that there was a blanket of grey cloud covering Christchurch.  Imagine our relief and the wow-factor when we rolled over the hills into this view in perfect clear blue skies.  Tekapo is only about two and a half hours from Christchurch, but what a difference?!

Seeing Lake Tekapo for the first time was a real 'wow' moment

Reaching Tekapo, we found the information centre who assisted us by arranging a pick-up for our tour tonight from pretty much the only camp site in Tekapo. The camping wasn’t cheap, but that may have something to do with the amazing views. 

The only cloud visible was 'hugging' the mountains

We were both exhausted.  I can’t think of an excuse.  We didn’t seem to have had a tough day but maybe the constant travelling is catching up with us.  We were booked on the last tour of the night, at 1130pm. This gave us an excuse to bed down for a few hours prior to meeting our shuttle bus at 1120pm at reception.  

Just opening the sliding door on our camper and getting our first glimpse of the night sky was enough to make us gasp.  It was perfectly clear and there were more stars than I can ever remember seeing.

This is just a fraction of the stars that I was able to see with the naked eye... my camera just hasn't got the skills

A dark sky reserve is where a section of sky is normally linked with a University where they study the constellations.  It means that the light levels in the area are regulated and ambient light sources, such as street lighting, is minimised.  Also, it is a ‘No-Fly Zone’, which meant that our informative guide could use an extremely bright green laser pen to indicate the group of stars that she was telling us about, without any danger to aircraft.  The facility only had very low red lighting and they used only side-lights to drive the minibuses.  In a normal night sky in a City or town on a clear night you might be lucky to see one thousand stars.  In Tekapo, on a brilliantly clear night such as the one we were lucky enough to witness, you can see at least three or four thousand! 

Our group was invited to stand on the deck, wrapped in blankets, with our heads tilted back to the sky whilst we were given astronomical gems of information.  For example, we were shown two ‘clouds’ of stars that look almost like dust clouds.  These are the Magellanic clouds (immodestly named by the explorer after himself) and these are the only two things visible with the naked eye in the night sky that exist OUTSIDE our own galaxy.  That’s right, we were looking at other galaxies far, far away.  

Our knowledgeable Scottish guide gave a quirky slant to star-gazing, telling us that we could consider ourselves time-travellers when we are looking at the night sky.  The light entering our eyes from each star would have travelled many light years so, depending on which star we were looking at, we were effectively seeing that star back in time by many years.  It is easy to feel bamboozled by the figures when it comes to space information and it can leave you feeling very insignificant as we all fumble along in our own little lives - but we were encouraged to feel the opposite. Think about this… Every single one of us comes from space matter, that at one time was in a single tiny place. Therefore, we all began together and continue to be connected through our astral heritage. 

Enough philosophising, it was time to go ‘full Patrick Moore’ and take a gander through some high-power telescopes.  There were three set up focussing on different space phenomena.  Our favourite was the one pointing at the Orion constellation where we could see the detail in the line of stars making up Orion’s sword to see that they consisted of a nebula of young, still developing stars.

The star-gazing lasted an hour but that was not the end of our night. As it was especially cold tonight I was very much looking forward to the heated outside spa pool.  As the last group of the night, we had free reign over the changing rooms and as we walked out to the pool and reluctantly shed our towels onto benches, we were handed a hammock.  This consisted of two inflatable ends with deck chair material in between them.  The design worked perfectly so that when you put one inflatable ‘pillow’ behind your knees, the rest unrolled to tuck the other inflatable part right under your head to support you in the water.  Bliss.  As soon as my toes were in the water they were tingling from the sudden change from cold to warmth and the steam coming off the surface of the water was eerie but comforting.   

The steamy spa pool (don't panic, no semi-nude people are in this image!)

When the moon rose it reflected brightly in the lake

Our guides continued to chat to us about all things stellar as we floated and relaxed, especially as the half-moon rose to join us and we even got a view of Jupiter.  What a completely unique experience.  I find the solar system fascinating and to combine that interest with a relaxing float in a hot pool was brilliant fun.  It was heading towards 2am by the time we wandered back to spend our first night in ‘the sheep’!