February 20 - Omarama to Lake Tekapo - 92 km

A bit of a lazy start from Omarama.  I thought you might like this sheep statue in the middle of  town (ie. the highway junction).  For those of you who got tired of one lane bridges (of which there are still many) I've switched to kitchy statues.

The first surprize of the day - a salmon farm!  We are almost as far from the ocean as you can be in NZ.  Being nosy, I stopped  for a quick chat.  They raise Chinook salmon, in fresh water in net pens.  The water is glacial run-off and is cold which apparently suits the fish.  I don't know how they have become accustomed to living their entire life in fresh water.  Anyway, the fish looked great and the price was $15.90/kg for a whole, cleaned fish, head on.  I think that is better than the price in BC.




A nice flat 30 km to a town called Twizel, where we had a second breakfast around 10 am.  It turned out to be a good idea as there was nothing between Twizel and Lake Tekapo.  A few kilometers out of  Twizel we ran into a British Couple cycling in the opposite direction, towards Queenstown.  After the usual chat about where are you from, how long have you been on the road, how many flats, etc they told us to expect strong headwinds for the rest of the ride.  Oh, well.  A note about cyclists - the standard trip in this part of the country is a week or so from Christchurch to Queenstown, possibly with rented gear.  We've passed a dozen or so on this route in the past couple of days, although these Brits were on 6 weeks in NZ following a couple of months in Asia.

We usually stop or at least look like we're stopping when we pass cyclists.  About a quarter will stop.  I'm guessing the reason others don't stop is that they don't speak English or they are just plain anti-social.  In general, bicyclists are not a rarity on the NZ roads so most locals pay us no attention.

Back to today's ride - we are going through the Waitaki region.  This is a very wide valley with a
number of lakes and rivers.  The headwaters for the rivers are actually the inland side of the coastal mountain ranges, where we were a couple of weeks ago (Franz Josef, Fox).  The big feature of this area is hydro installations. There are 8 hydro stations on a chain of lakes (man made and natural) joined with 50 km of canals.  So, water entering the first lake on the chain (Lake Tekapo) will flow through 7 lakes, 4 canals and the 8 hydro stations on its way to the ocean.

We bicycled an alternate route to Lake Tekapo via one of the (private) canal roads.  Here's Laura after we went around a gate.  We turned onto this road through an open gate and were passed by a Meridian (hydro) vehicle whose driver was closing the gates.  He didn't stop to give us hell, so it couldn't have been a problem, except we had to man handle the bikes around the gate.

Oh yes, the headwinds - the British cyslists were correct, we got some good ones, especially on the
canal road.  We fought our way onward to Lake Tekapo and arrived a little chilly, as the elevation
of the town is about 720 meters.  Lake Tekapo is a samll town (350 residents) and who knows how
many tourists, as it seems to be another logical stop on the route between Christchurch and Queenstown.  Accommodations were scarce but we got a nice motel unit just back from the lake.
Here's the view from the unit.  The photo doesn't show it but there is a fierce wind blowing down the

lake.

A couple more photos of Lake Tekapo.  The first is a pretty little stone church on the lakefront.  And, a statue honouring the Collie dog, "..without the help of which the grazing of this mountain country would be impossible."  I like it better than the sheep.  What do you think, Tyce?

Onward tomorrow, maybe.  Its raining here now.  That may be good news as we were told that it is 

either very windy here or it rains.  A nice choice, eh?