Seeing stars at Lake Tekapo

Day 9 (27 October 2026)

We woke up to find that the weather had cleared up in the night. The sun is up, it's a beautiful day. In fact, the rain left a gorgeous layer of 云海 (sea of clouds) which HM explained, happens only after a heavy downpour. A dense flat layer of clouds settles into valleys and mountain peaks, making the summits look like islands floating on a white ocean. 

  

We saw it clearer when we made our way to the Kura Tawhiti Conservation Area. Just look at that sea of clouds!

We came here to see the limestone rock formations. This area used to be underwater some 30 million years ago. The limestone outcrops were formed from compressed shells that accumulated on the seafloor, until the collision of tectonic plates pushed these mountain ranges up and exposed the limestone rock.

They look like a more impressive version of Stonehenge. Movies have even been filmed here, including The Chronicles of Narnia. 

They're a lot larger than they look in the photo. Here's a better perspective.

 

 

It's a bit of a climb but interestingly enough, even though my knees felts so achy last night that I had trouble climbing the stairs in the apartment, it's not so bad today after a night's sleep. The general environment here in NZ is just restorative. Still, needed to sit down for a bit 😅

 

Goodbye Castle Hill, you were truly memorable. Next destination is Lake Tekapo and it's a scenic drive down the Great Alpine Highway with lots of turns down the mountain, which Andre navigated brilliantly. 

Along both sides of the highway, the fields lit up with kowhai, the unofficial NZ flower. These yellow blooms flood the fields, hills and bushes in late winter and spring.  

 

We did a pit stop at Sheffield pies which is supposed to be world famous, according to Google. The trouble with places that make it to the world map, though, is that it becomes a tourist attraction. As just we arrived, a tour bus pulled up and instantly, a throng of people flocked into the small shop, with a queue snaking outside.

As we joined the queue, a local walked by outside the shop and yelled, "They're not worth it!" 😆 I thought they were good but not mind-blowing. We've had better pies elsewhere in NZ. 

Then it's back on the road. Had time to stop for Mona to take 101 photos of sheep 🐑

The funny thing is when she got out of the car to take photos, all the sheep turned and stared at her 😆

This is such a beautiful country.

 

 I wonder where they're moo-ving to...

Stuck behind a tractor... 

For most of the way into Lake Tekapo, we saw heavy cloud cover which wasn't ideal, as on the cards tonight was star gazing, which could only take place if the skies are clear.

 

When the Southern Alps came into view, it was an awesome sight. The Southern Alps are a mountain range along NZ's south island, comprising several peaks, the tallest of which is Mount Cook. Just look at that cloud formation!  

We checked into Mantra Lake Tekapo.   

 

The two-storey apartment fits all six of us, and as always, it is beautifully furnished and fully equipped. It's so inviting that Joel's eyes lit up when he found out the next door unit is for sale 🤭

First order of business - drink some chocolate milk.

 

We went out to explore Lake Tekapo. It's a glacial-fed alpine lake, which accounts for its striking turquoise waters. So so beautiful. If I were to paint water this colour, you would say it's fake.

 

And amazingly, the skies cleared up - all the clouds we saw earlier have somehow blown away. What was left was this saturated blue sky that seemed to stretch on forever. God has blessed us with terrific weather on this trip.

 

Right at the shore is the Church of the Good Shepherd, a historic stone church built in 1935. 

What's inside?

This

Outside the church is a bronze statue of a Mackenzie Sheep Dog, a tribute to the hardworking border collies used in sheep farming. It bears the Gaelic inscription, translated as "Blessings on the sheep dogs". Aww that's sweet 🩷  

We were planning to eat dinner at Kohan, a Japanese restaurant, but was told it was fully booked. Lake Tekapo is the first place we've been where it's clearly a tourist destination, there are tourists everywhere and restaurants are actually crowded even at 6pm. In the end, we went to a Japanese/Thai restaurant where we had our first Asian cuisine on the trip.

 

But the highlight of Lake Tekapo was yet to come. The main reason we're here is for stargazing. Stars can only be seen if the skies are truly dark and cloudless. In Singapore, we can barely make out stars because 1) we have too much ambient lighting in the streets 2) Singapore is very cloudy. Lake Tekapo is a Dark Sky Reserve. Its strict local lighting rules means there is minimal light pollution and exceptional crystal clear night skies.

The organisers could only let us know 15 mins beforehand whether we could go ahead, as it depended on weather conditions. So we were literally sitting at the apartment waiting for a notification...and it's a yes! 

It's a short drive and near the area, the markings stopped and we only had a series of red lights to guide us. That's how they minimise ambient lighting at the area. First, they led us to a row of deck chairs where we could sit back and look at the stars above. Then they plied us with thick soft blankets because it's freezing (ok not literally freezing, but it was probably around 4 degrees celcius with wind). I didn't want to move from under the blanket. Sticking my hand out into the night air was too chilly for words.

They posed us for a group photo - we had to hold still for several seconds in order to be able to capture the dark sky (which explains why most of us were wearing a grimace).

 

It's fascinating - I've never experienced anything like this. At first when you look up, you see a few stars. But as your eyes adjust to the pitch blackness, you start to see a whole host of them. Lying there on the deck chair staring at the large expanse of sky makes you think how small you are in the grand scheme of things.

The guide gave us a basic astronomy lesson - how to spot the Southern Cross, how to gain our bearings using the moon as a guide. If a star is 400 light years away, it means that it was shining in the 1600s and we're only seeing it now. In other words, a star could be dead but we're still seeing it here because it took that long for the image to travel here. One of the brightest stars currently is 5 light years away, meaning that it was shining during COVID and we're just seeing it now. 

We also learned that stars have different colours. Blue stars are hottest while red stars are less hot, meaning they're dying stars. But even though we say they're dying, it means they will die out maybe in a million years. 

It's just mind-boggling. My brain couldn't wrap around the vastness of the universe which God created, as well as the sweeping expanse of time. I felt like I was only seeing a glimpse of how magnificent God is, and how utterly insignificant we are in comparison. Psalm 8 came alive for me that night.

 "When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?" - Psalm 8:3,4 

There were two telescopes that we could look through. Blew my mind that we could see entire galaxies. Here are some of the images we saw: The Tarantula Nebula which in layman's term, is like a star factory - it churns out hundreds of thousands of newborn stars. The fact that it's about 160,000 light years away outside our galaxy and yet we can see it means it contains some of the brightest stars ever discovered.  

The 47 Tucanae, one of the brightest and most massive star clusters in the night sky. Estimated to be 10.5-13 billion years old.

The Sculptor Filament - one of the closest galaxy groups closest to us (11-13 million light years away). Confession: the first time I saw this name on the photo, I thought it was the name of the telescope lens 🫣 

Now that I've explained all the scientific bits, here's an honest narrative of what happened on site. Among the six of us, only Joel is an astronomy buff. The rest of us are at the "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" level. And if you think I'm exaggerating, when the guide told us to look at the moon to find our bearings, it took Andre a while to realise he had been gazing at a far off street lamp 😂. And once when trying to look into a telescope, Mona found herself staring down the wrong end (to be fair, it WAS dark).

The guide is clearly very passionate about her job, and she's interesting too. It's not her fault that she lost us halfway because ya know, there's a limit to how much information our feeble brains can contain at one go. So there we were, literally staring into space (I've waited my whole life to be able to say that), and each time the guide said something profound, Andre and Mona would get into an involuntary fit of giggles because it totally flew over their heads. It got to a point where the two of them had to avoid eye contact because every time their eyes met, they would laugh hysterically.

Then the guide said, "If you look at that bright star, from your peripheral vision, you'll be able to see a smudge. That's the Tarantula Nebula." Joel went "ohhhhhh!" To which the rest of us just lost it, because yeah, we saw nothin'. (When I say "we", I exclude Lesley-Anne because she's his loyal wife and also, she has more intellectual pursuits than the rest of her family). 

Towards the end of the night, most of us loitered around the gas fire to keep warm. When I asked HM if he understood what was going on, he replied, "I look like I'm paying attention but I'm not." Survival skills from school!

The session ended with roasting marshmallows over a fire. I think mine were undercooked. 

But seriously, no regrets doing this. Five-star experience. Back at the apartment, Joel did more stargazing and sent us some info from his app. Gold-star student ⭐️