Kimbell and Lake Tekapo

Monday we said our farewells to the family at Twin Gullies and made our way via Geraldine and Fairlie to the wee one-horse town of Kimbell. If you drive through Kimbell and blink, you'll miss it. Even so it has an art gallery in the one and only hotel, as well as the Silverstream Gallery and Studio. We spent a very pleasant time browsing through the artworks on display. The resident artist is Lloyd Harwood and some of his work was rather nice, to put it mildly. Of course, our favourite work was much too expensive for our meagre pockets! What struck me is that Lloyd Harwood is equally comfortable and adept at pencil sketches, water colours and oil paintings.

We slept over at Rivendell Lodge as guests of Joan Gill - what a pleasant stay in this Tolkien-friendly house with rooms named Lorien, Nimrais, Edoras and Rauros. We slept soundly in Lorien.

Lake Tekapo is but a few minutes drive from Kimbell, so we went to explore. This part of the New Zealand contryside is known for the wild lupins found predominantly next to the roads.

Like many of the inland lakes, the water in Lake Tekapo has the most amazing brilliant turquoise colour. We walked up the track along Mt John for about 15 minutes to get a bird's eye view of the lake.

The Church of the Good Shepherd on the shore of Lake Tekapo was built in 1935, the first church built in the Mackenzie Basin. The church was designed by Christchurch architect R.S.D. Harman, based on sketches by a local artist, Esther Hope. The church is arguably one of the most photographed in New Zealand. While we were there busloads of tourists milled around the church and since we shy away from crowds we did not go any closer.