Lake Tekapo, New Zealand

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The Church of the Good Shepherd is just to the right of this photo.


We did make it out of Western Samoa....driving through the pouring rain to the airport..and our landlady texted to say that, so far, the cyclone has skirted the island ; I think we're both going to miss Samoa and listening to tropical rain belting down , although having now reached New Zealand and opened our cases of damp damp clothing and found that they dried out within a few hours, we are not missing the saturated atmosphere. The temperature was a bit of a change too...down from 30'C  to about 15 when we arrived at midday.
We have spent our first half day in NZ (a day we lost because having crossed the date line  we missed out on Saturday entirely!) driving from Christchurch to Lake Tekapo,po about 3 hours south. We turned up, found a hotel with an amazing view and have just watched the sun go down over the lake whilst eating the most delicious fish and chips. Being Sunday, we found that there was a service at  the Church of the Good Shepherd right on the edge of the lake and shared communion and the lake view, through the picture window behind the altar, with a congregation of about 20.  The sun shone as we arrived here but who knows what tomorrow will bring....we really don't mind -it's all good!