Again, another early start, another scramble through my bag in a dark room and packing in the dark.

Met the new driver, Vale, seems pretty nice even if he has got shorts and leggings on... Must be a New Zealand thing lol!!! On the bus were also some Irish girls that we'd met before in Picton and they seemed really nice.

On the way to Lake Tekapo we stopped at another beautiful lake where if you're very lucky you can see Mount Cook, New Zealand's tallest mountain. I was super lucky and one of the 22% of people that get to see it, yay!!
Then we stopped at a really cute little church called 'the church of the good Shepard' and some statue of a bronze dog... Not sure what's going on there.

Anyhoo, we got to Lake Tekapo, and oh my god!!! What a gorgeous place! It's only a tiny little village but has this huge lake on the edge (clues in the name I guess) and apart from the lake, there's really not much there. There's one pub which is like a working club, a tiny supermarket, an observatory, a few other shops and that's about it.

The hostel we were staying in was a really cute lodge type cabin, and the rooms were really warm: Lucy, Alice and I decided to go for a walk round the lake and just admire the amazing view as it really is spectacular.
Stupid pictures were taken, skimming rocks was attempted and then we ended up walking through a huge pile of mud before trudging back to the hostel.
After a little snooze and some food we headed out to the pub with a few other people and Vale.
On the way to the pub Vale gave us a quick lesson in the stars and showed us the southern cross and a few other constellations which was really interesting. I actually had a moment in Australia where I got really freaked out looking at the stars because I realised it wasn't the sky I was used to seeing at home and I couldn't find Orion's belt: I know it'll sound really stupid but that was one moment when I really did feel far away from home.
Anyway back to lake Tekapo; the reason Vale was able to give us a lesson in stars and the reason they have an observatory there is that it has one of the clearest skies in the world. You have to follow certain rules here and can't have lights outside your house unless they're shaded and street lights aren't as common or as bright so that there's reduced light pollution. It has 'dark sky' status for star gazing; only four places in the world have this and recently it became the only place to be a gold rated reserve meaning you can see 50million stars.
They definitely aren't lying about this either, I've always been fascinated and amazed by the night sky and do really like to look at stars but my god, I've never seen so many at one time before, it was just phenomenal!!! It made me love this place even more!
We had a quick drink in the pub and then went back to the hostel as again it was another early morning.