It was our driving day today to Christchurch with a stop at Lake Tekapo in between. It was still cloudy when we started our journey from Twizel and we prayed for a clear day! As we crossed Twizel and reached the other end of Lake Pukaki, the sky started getting clear with the sun coming out.

Our prayers reached the sun and we could see a complete clear blue sky after many days.

We headed to Mt John Observatory hill near Lake Tekapo, to get a good view of the place.

Mt.John observatory is run by the University of Canterbury, and offers observatory tours. The main attraction there during the daytime was the Astro Cafe.

The view of Lake Tekapo from the Cafe was amazingly beautiful.

I couldn’t think of a better place to sip my hot chocolate and a better topping than a Saturn ring 🙂 A sip between earth and sky!

There were many telescopes set up on the hill for astronomical research.

I wished to stay the entire day and night there waiting to see the night sky, but we booked our stay in Christchurch that night! We were tempted to stay back at Lake Tekapo for the night as the sky looked promising.

We searched for accommodation options there and found them to be a bit costly. We decided to visit Earth & Sky observatory tours and check with them on that night’s weather and based on that, we wanted to make a final decision. The tour operator checked the prediction and told us that it will be 80% cloudy after 8:30pm in the night and then we decided not to stay there.

We were indecisive for about an hour and the operator helped us make a decision.

We headed down to Lake Tekapo to get a closer view of the lake and I got a chance to take a picture of fall colors’ reflection in the lake, which I was aiming for ever since I landed in NZ 🙂

We crossed the Footbridge over the lake, to reach the famous “Church of Good Shepherd” situated on the shores of Lake Tekapo.

The church is a famous photography spot in Lake Tekapo, particularly during the night under the star cover.

We spent time around Lake Tekapo till afternoon and started our road trip to Christchurch.

The mountains slowly vanished from our sight and many towns came up on our route to Christchurch.

We reached Christchurch by evening and we headed out for dinner to explore the night life. Christchurch looked like a bigger city with wider roads, compared to all other roads in the South Island. We found many restaurant options in the city center and tried a dish each in Mexican and Italian restaurants 🙂

Without mountains around, it feels like the end of our trip already, though our flight is scheduled for tomorrow evening!

I couldn’t thank the Sun enough for his bright presence today and making it a wonderful day 🙂