Tonight’s lodging is in the shadow of Aoraki / Mt Cook, which at 3,724 meters (12,218 feet) is the tallest mountain in Australasia. The park is also home to 19 of the 20 peaks in New Zealand that are taller than 3,000 meters, and its 273 square miles are 40% covered in glaciers, so it’s quite the alpine destination. I arrived a bit late in the day to do much exploring, but if the weather forecast holds I’ll be wearing some holes in my hiking shoes over the next two days.
The journey to get here traveled through an area known as the Canterbury Plain, which one guidebook described as “scenically deprived”, and of which Hugh (half of the proprietorship at the Coombe Farm B&B) noted “not much to see along that route”. I thought the five hour drive up through farmland and fields was rustic and charming, but as warned, there weren’t a lot of compelling places to stop for the first several hours.
The first recommended opportunity to get out of the car was in the tiny town of Fairlie to visit the Fairlie Bakehouse. The town itself didn’t seem that notable – main street, lots of shops, a park – but the bakehouse is mentioned in every guidebook, and was the one place both Hugh & his wife Kathrine said to visit. The shop is famous for their meat pies, and while as an American I don’t know much about pies made of meat, I’ve got to say I bought three of them for the equivalent of about $5 USD each (flavors: meatball & mushroom, butter chicken, and vegetable curry), and I got an extremely tasty lunch, dinner and future breakfast out of the bunch.
After leaving the plains the scenery became more dramatic, first with glacier-fed Lake Tekapo appearing against a backdrop of mountains, followed by the even more impressive sight of Lake Pukaki surrounded by glacier-covered peaks. I made stops at both lakes, and at the second also visited a place that I had highlighted in my guidebook. High Country Salmon, located as far from the coasts as you can be in this country, supposedly boasts the best salmon sashimi in New Zealand, so I had to give it a try. They have nearby fish farms fed by glacier water, so it’s fresh as can be, and while salmon isn’t normally my goto sushi, I went back and bought a second takeaway portion after the first helping, and will probably be visiting them again in a few days after leaving the park.
I see your father in you, Ryan!
He always talked about the food he was eating, too…..