After coming back from Australia, I had a couple days to get settled back in Christchurch, do my laundry, and catch up on some homework. But, the last weekend of break I went on a trip organized by Physsoc, the physics and astronomy club, to Lake Tekapo. We left early on Thursday morning and returned on Saturday afternoon. We drove to a campsite right next to the lake and set up tents. My friend Thomas had a huge eight person tent, so a bunch of my friends and I could all fit.
After setting up our sleeping tents and the main kitchen tent, we hiked up Mt. John to an observatory that is used for research and student projects. It was quite windy up there, so I was glad I wore layers. We got a tour of the observatory from the people who work there and got to see the telescopes and other instruments they use, and then headed back down the mountain. One group helped make dinner and everyone else hung out and got to know each other.
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After dinner, we all got into bathing suits and went to the Lake Tekapo hot pools. Some people went in the lake and then ran up to the hot pools, but I passed on that since I was cold enough already. The hot pools were basically just really large hot tubs, and it was so nice to warm up and enjoy the cold air combined with the hot water.
After coming back from the hot springs and changing back into warm clothes, we had a scavenger hunt to play in the dark. We got into teams of three or four and then had a list of categories like “something old,” “longest pine needle,” and “weirdest shaped rock” that we had to go and find in 45 minutes. We could be as creative as we wanted, so it was funny to see what people came up with after we all reconvened and shared. In the end, the judges deliberated and my group won!
That night we had planned to go back up to the observatory to be able to use the telescopes, but we got a call from the people working there that it was dangerously windy, so it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to go up there. It was disappointing, but we still were able to sit out by the lake and take in the stars, since we were able to see so many.
The next day, we got up and had breakfast before driving an hour and a half to the Hermitage Hotel, which also has a museum and planetarium. When we got there it was raining pretty heavily, and our group was given the option to do the planned short hike to Lake Mueller or stay behind until the planetarium show. I decided to give the hike a shot since most people were going and I didn’t want to regret not going all out. The hike was only about 45 minutes, but within half an hour I could feel the water in my shoes squishing and my leggings were soaked through. Once we got to the lookout point, we could see Mueller Glacier and Lake, but it was so foggy we couldn’t see much else, including Mt. Cook. It was definitely memorable, but we were all cold and wet and happy to huddle around the fireplace once we got back to the hotel.
After the hike, we went into the planetarium and watched two shows. I’ve always loved planetariums and found astronomy interesting, so I was excited we got to stay and watch a couple shows. After the planetarium shows, we got back on the bus and drove back to our campsite. Of course, as we were leaving the rain had stopped and the sun had started to come out. We even saw a beautiful rainbow on the way back! We got back to the campsite, where I promptly got into dry clothes and spent some time drying out my shoes with the hair dryer in the bathroom.
After the rain comes a rainbow!
That night, we had a campfire down on the beach by the lake and roasted marshmallows. The marshmallows here are really small and not the right texture, so they didn’t really melt as well as ones back home do, and they didn’t have graham crackers or chocolate, so for our s’mores we had to improvise using Oreos instead.
The next morning, we mainly packed up the campsite and got ready to head back to Christchurch. We took some group photos down by the lake including this one where we were told to point at our favorite stars (notice Diana in the front center pointing at herself).
Hammond Adventures 