Lake Tekapo

It's pronounced Lake Tek-a-poh. Not Take-a-poo. Even though we know that, Perin and I still mis-pronounce it all the time. We made in pretty good time on 24 Dec: it was still light out when we got there. The view of Mt. Cook was great, but last time we were here with family there was more snow at tht etop making the view even more spectacular.

The best was making our dinner in the communcal kitchen that evening. The camp site wasn't all the way full, but there were quite a few Froggies there. And the French know how to do communal meals. They had grilled chicken kabobs with oven baked potatoes and a huge salad. They also had numerous spreads of crackers and cheeses, lots of olives, hard boiled eggs, lox, cottage cheese, salamis, pan-fried garlic bread, and numerous bottle of NZ Bubbles (Champagne).

Actually what I think impressed me the most was that they were a group of young 20-somethings traveling together putting such a fine meal together. They looked like a snowbaording crew I would have hung out with at college. And while my crew and theirs shared backwards hats and hooded sweatshirts, that meal was finer than anyting we would have put together.

There were some senior British tourists as well who had toast with a selection of margarines (from what I can tell) for their dinner. They were engaged in a not-so-fascinating discussion of the history of pattern recognition in architectural arch-types from the 20th century to the present. It sounded to me a like a boorish way of saying that architects copy each other.

And what about your dear American bloggers? What did they have for dinner? Hamburgers. Damn straight we had hamburgers. And we split a can of corn between us for a side dish. Nobody spoke a single word of French to us. English all the way.