A2O day 1. Awesome! We started along the canal road from Lake Tekapo to Lake Pukaki. These lakes are all connected by canals and feed into a huge hydro-electric system. This canal road alternated between sealed road and gravel. The gravel sections were pretty loose but had a nice single track worn down the middle.

The road followed the valley where there would have been a river were the water not all diverted into the canal. As we went along the mountains started coming into view. There was a salmon farm on the canal which did not impress me, but there were a lot of fisher people on the banks. After that there was a dam and then a big climb, then it was downhill to Lake Pukaki.

At Lake Pukaki we joined the main route coming down the north side from Aoraki. We road back up that direction for a short way and then stopped for lunch. It was a great spot and I would have loved to camp there. Instead we continued on to Twizel and stayed at a holiday park.