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Wutheringbikes Home -- New Zealand
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5th Feb 2011 - Cycling Past Mount Cook
From Twizel (pron. Twyzel) - Lake Ruataniwha Holiday Park (4kms south of Twizel) to Fairlie Top 10 Holiday Park - about 105kms or c. 66 miles. First of all we went to Twizel to try to get spare inner tubes since Guy's repeated (x6) problem getting his tube mended. We were in luck and that and the large chocolate muffin set us up for a good, if a little late, start. We hurtled along to Lake Pukaki, marvelling at the views of distant mountains that were opening up. At Lake Pukaki I took a lot of photos of Mt Cook - wreathed in whispy cloud but mostly very viewable - and also a lovely lump of greenstone, a sort of NZ amber, that they had there in the visitors' centre. Then on to the turning for the Mt Cook Salmon Farm where we turned off onto a minor road that, after following the lake for a while (and where the picture above was taken - note Mt Cook which is the obvious big peak to Guy's left), follows the route of the remarkable canal that joins Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapo. After a climb up to the level of the canal we made decent time to where the canal road was shut and we had to rejoin the main highway. The views from the canal are tremendous and the canal itself is a remarkable piece of engineering - huge earth banks the size of a substantial hill.Lake Tekapo Town is pretty but is very much a tourist town. We ate some food, looked quickly at the old church on the lakeshore which was crammed with people taking photos and buying postcards so not much contemplative silence there. So we pressed on, mostly downhill, apart from the minor hill that gets the overimpressive name of Burk's Pass, towards Fairlie. We made very good time, and got to Fairlie about 7pm-ish. Fairlie had a display telling us about a sheep rustling Mackenzie from years back whose fame led to this whole area being known as the Mackenzie Country.The Top 10 in Fairlie is a pleasant campsite ($35 for the two of us) but has an outstanding feature - free wifi! This would be too trivial to mention in the UK but here it is a rare thing and to be treasured - in particular by downloading even more books onto my kindle (for free from the wonderful www.gutenberg.org). Currently I'm reading the old whale tale mentioned in connection with Bluff - The Cruise of the Cachalot. The video just below is one of the last clips of video I did - this time while cycling along the busy road from Twizel (ah, how do you pronounce that without it sounding silly?) to Mount Cook. That great big snowy mountain is Mount Cook, if you were wondering...
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