We woke up around 8:00AM to get ready to drive back to Christchurch, and oh man, was I sore!  My neck and triceps were hurting, and my abdominal muscles definitely got a good workout (thankfully).  We packed up the car, got breakfast at Halo Cafe again, and started the trip home.

We took a different route home than the one we came in on; therefore, we would not be stopping at Lake Wanaka, as we had earlier.  The drive is spectacular.  The “highway” is simply a two-lane road, and most of the traffic is tour buses from Christchurch and cyclists - many of them with pannier bags loaded with gear.  Backpackers’ shacks are scattered along the route.  There were no clouds in the sky and mountains as far as the eye could see.  It was spectacular!  As with the rest of the trip, I could not believe my eyes, and I could not stop saying “Wow!”.   Eventually, we drove by the lookout at Lake Pukaki, where we stopped for the sunrise on the way down.  Unlike our visit, when it was dead quiet, it was now teeming with tourists.  We continued on a short way to Lake Tekapo.  I posted an earlier article about how Tekapo is a town with no light pollution.  Lake Tekapo is similar to Lake Pukaki in that it is fed by glacier snow melt; therefore, it has the same unnatural blue color.  While we did not get to see the night sky featured in the article, we could see Mt. Cook in the distance and took some great photos.

Next, Christian took us to an organic salmon farm where the fish is raised in the mineral-rich waters of the lakes.  Since there is no farm run-off or coal plants, mercury is not a risk.  We bought a bunch for a lot less money than we expected and got back on the road.

Up ahead, we could see what is known as Lindis Pass.  It is a valley in between two large mountains, filled with a blanket of clouds.  Once we entered the pass, the sun was gone, and it was cloudy all way back to Christchurch.  Clouds, however, mean moisture, which turned the whole area inside the pass into lush, green, sub-tropical terrain.  This was in sharp contrast to the yellow, dry mountains we had seen for the last several hours.  Here, there were abundant farms and livestock grazing. We saw many venison farms, and in some of these paddocks were several big, eight- and ten-point bucks.  I had to imagine that this was some sort of hunter’s heaven: large, healthy bucks in a pen with nowhere to run, just begging to be picked off.  It is still strange to me to see large groups of deer like this.

The rest of the trip was uneventful.  When we got home, we unloaded the car; Christian had to get ready for work (he is a real trooper, that man).  The rest of the night was spent doing laundry and getting ready for the days ahead.  We had fully exploited our time in Queenstown, and it was time to rest.