On Thursday 25th March
we left Christchurch to drive to Lake Tekapo. We travelled
across the Canterbury plains where there were lots of sheep
in a very flat landscape, but with mountains in the distance
all the way to the West. We lunched in Timaru, a small but
interesting town with a church based on Gloucester Cathedral
and a very odd Roman Catholic basilica. |
Lake Tekapo itself is stunningly
beautiful, surrounded by huge mountains, some still with
snow, and the water is the most unlikely shade of turquoise.
The famous tiny Church of the Good Shepherd is right on
the lake front and you can see Mount Cook through the window
at the East end. |
That night, Canterbury University's
observatory was open to the public for one night only. So
we arranged to go. We were picked up by a Chinese youth
in an old battered coach. Two Japanese girls were the only
other fellow-travellers. He drove up a steep winding road
to the observatory, with lots of sheer drops, with the headlights
off, one hand on the wheel and one holding a little torch,
whose feeble light barely illuminated the road ahead. Apparently
he can't use headlights because this would spoil the star-gazing
at the Observatory!
Somehow we got there in one piece and were
able to look through the largest telescopes in the Southern
Hemisphere at Jupiter, Saturn (seeing some of the planets'
moons, too!) and the Orion Nebula. Simply stunning... |
