Cycletouring2 : Tuesday 11th March - Onwards to Geraldine

Our plan was to go on to Lake Tekapo and visit the "dark skies" observatory at Mount John on the way. They have a cafe there and as it was high up, of course an exerlent view was expected. We pictured ourselves drinking and eating quality food whilst taking in the lovely view. The Lonely Planet (it said on the observatory web site) said it was the best place for a cafe in the world.

The day started overcast but so had yesterday and it soon burnt off and we had a few miles to drive to get to Lake Tekapo. We got to the observatory turn off, still overcast. More bad news as well. The town was having a "planned power outage" and we could see tons of worker replacing a substation and power cables on the main road. Up we drove to the observatory on the top of Mount John into a complete white out. We had our trangia so had a brew up and waited for the fog to burn off, it was already blue sky above us. Over an hour later, cold and a little bored we gave up and went back down the mountain to the town. We got to the town and looked up and the observatory was bathed in sunlight!

We could have stayed in town and paid one hundred and thirty dollars each to see the sky at night. It would have meant staying in town however and not much was going on so we pressed on. A shame we missed out on viewing the sky at night as it is supposed to be one of four areas of the world where light pollution is really low.

Average scenery to Geraldine and the cloud has returned. Not everyday on a tour can be fantastic,but we got a cabin at three so we could have an early tea, sort our washing and do some planning for tomorrow. Still cold so not camping!