The Southern Cross

The winds were too much for the hot air ballooning again, so we took a walk down to the Queenstown Gardens, which were quiet and full of beautiful flora. We walked around the perimeter, passed the Frisbee golf course and the “bowling club” green before packing up and getting in the car to begin the next vacation phase at Lake Tekapo. Yesterday, we inadvertently pronounced it Lake Take-A-Poo while talking to a Kiwi in an outdoor store and had a great laugh. On the way to the lake (pronounced Teek-up-oh) we randomly decided to drive through Cromwell, a town known for its fruit production (as boasted by their three story fake fruit sculpture at the edge of town. What do you know Cromwell had a farmers market going on in the older district of stone and wooden buildings. The farmers market was extremely small but had a band, a wild game meat vendor, a cheese vendor, a salami vendor, a plant vendor, a few vegetable vendors, and a couple of food vendors. The band sounded like an African bluegrass band. It was a group of Africans that had an awesome sound. The main point of interest for me was the bass player. The bass was a box with a piece of twine connected to the box by a broomstick. The bass player would change the tension of the twine by moving the broomstick to and fro. What an ingenious bass. Ingrid and I tried some cheese and bought one that was similar to Parmesan. One of the food vendors advertised the best whitebait patties in town, so we gave it a try. The grill looked like it had been seasoned well, so I really thought we were in for a treat. The guy grilled up the whitebait patty (again a mixture of egg and whitebait) and put it on a buttered piece of bread with a squeeze of lemon. Good, not great. It was like a slightly fishy omelet on buttered bread. Next we shared a sausage with onion marmalade, which was pretty good. Up the road a little bit we stopped at The Merino Shop and the Country Coffee Shoppe for some shopping and a nice lunch. Being inland a bit we were a bit suspect that there were green-lipped mussels on the menu. However, our running theme required us to get them for lunch and we were not disappointed. The mussels were really good. Ingrid got the chicken salad, which was also very good. We drove by Lindis Pass, a mountainous area devoid of a lot of grasses, and Lake Pukaki, our first taste of unbelievably blue glacier fed lakes that had a view of Mount Cook, on the way to Lake Tekapo. Our room in the Lake Tekapo Scenic resort was a studio (bathroom and kitchen) overlooking the lake. It had to be one of the best rooms in town for the views and location. We donned our hiking attire for a climb up the nearby Mount John for a better vantage point. On the way along the rock-lined lake, we came across the most brilliant orange and purple flowers peeking out from the rocky shoreline of the lake. The actual climb was fairly steep and took us through a pine-covered section of hill, which kept us nice and cool. The top of Mount John was barren except for an observatory, and on the decent Ingrid got to fulfill her desire for up-close encounters with sheep. It was a good but tiring hike, some 3.5 hours. The Japanese restaurant that was recommended to us for dinner was closed so we ate at a restaurant called Reflections, which had a view of the lake. Lamb and venison, nothing special. We snagged some dessert from the 4 square market (a small grocer/convenience store) and headed back to our room’s balcony for sunset. That night we opted to take a tour of the stars with a local astronomer (who oddly enough went to San Diego State University for her degree). The stars were brilliant, as the light pollution is extremely minimal in this part of the country. We learned about the Southern Cross and true south and about nebulas and red giant stars. The way to determine true south is by use of the southern cross and another bright star directly below the long portion of the cross. The point in the middle of the cross and this tar is a good approximation of true south. And as there are many crosses in the night sky, a good way to know which is the true Southern Cross is to find two very bright stars (alpha centuri and beta centuri), which point to the southern cross. On the tour went with talks about the moon, Venus and Jupiter. We got a look at Orion (upside down in this hemisphere) and scorpio, taurus, the pleides. More talks about the milky way, a spiral galaxy, and how the earth is in one of the outstretched arms of the galaxy. The guide also mentioned blobular galaxies. It was quite an amazing tour.