Friday 15 February

Lake McGregor, McKenzie Country, in the vicinity of Lake Tekapo
It's nice to be properly camping again. We are on a sort-of campsite on the shores of Lake McGregor. I say sort-of because there is a long-drop toilet here, but not much level ground. As we sleep actually in the car rather than putting a tent up it's a lot more comfortable if we are on level ground.
We saw 4 yellow eyed penguins last night and hundreds of blue penguins. Two of the yellow penguins were chicks on a high ledge in the cliff face, waiting for the parent birds to come a shore and feed them. We saw two adult birds getting out of the water preparing for the hard climb up the cliff face, heavy with their food filled stomachs ready for regurgitation into the mouths of their chicks. The blue penguins came a shore in groups (called rafts) and hurried off to their nesting areas. As we returned to the camp site in the bus we saw stray birds on and beside the road making their way to unlikely nests under old buildings.
Back on the road this morning we turned inland to more glorious mountain scenery. We stopped off a couple of times to wonder at the construction techniques involved in the building of two of the hydro-electric dams across the Waitaki River, at Kurow and at Lake Benmore. The first one at Kurow was the last one to be built without the aid of mechanical equipment, just men, picks and shovels. The enormous dam at Lake Benmore has a 100 metre high earth barrier and water from four different lakes is fed into it.
We continued through Twizel, built originally as a settlement to house the men and their families as they worked on the construction of the dams, now a smallish town which serves the tourist industry associated with Mt Cook. It was a glorious sunny day, but there was a cap of cloud lingering on it's summit, which I think is very usual. Still I got a photo of most of it.
We had decided that Lake Tekapo would be a good place to overnight, but were a bit appalled at the description of the commercial Campsite and there aren't any DoC sites in the area. However the RG mentioned a DoC type site about 10 kms outside Lake Tepako, by a Lake McGregor. We weren't sure we were in the right place as there was no clear information about how to find it, and no sign posting from the road. We had nearly given up when we fell upon it, an idyllic setting on the shore of the lake, but very rough and uneven on quite a slope. There is a long drop and water from the lake. Even here we were surprised and a bit disappointed when a couple of large motor homes turned up, but it's mostly tents and people sleeping in their cars like us.
We sat down by the lake for the afternoon, reading, drinking beer and watching the birds. We saw Crested Grebe, Coots, Black Swans, and a finch-type bird, a bit like a chaffinch, I'll have to look it up.
When we camp in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe we usually try to avoid caravan sites, if possible seeking out tent only camps or at least ones which segregate the tents from the caravans, and we have encountered very few of these beasts of Motor Homes. There is of course the anecdotal moment when one turned up at Breck Farm, the most unspoilt of all our local campsites. John was heard to say 'whatever is that monstrosity doing here!' Only to learn that ot was friends of tje person standing next to him and coming to join our group. Even in Southern Africa we never felt overwhelmed by Motor Homes, most people tented, quite a few had trailer tents, but they were still tents. It doesn't seem to be just tourists in the Motor Homes here, there are lots of New Zealanders using them too. I can only think it's the inclement weather and the heavy rainfall. The Motor Homes Parks, which is what they are called, are exactly that, often like large Car Parks but with amazing facilities. However it does make camping a very different experience.