Lake Pukaki

The South Island of New Zealand must have the highest concentration of scenic landscapes and for a photographer trying to drive this is very distracting. I found myself stopping very frequently to run out the car with my camera gear to capture another wonderful vista. This beautiful lake here is Lake Pukaki which is the largest of three roughly parallel alpine lakes running north-south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin on New Zealand's South Island. The others are Lakes Tekapo and Ohau. All three lakes were created when the terminal moraines of receding glaciers blocked their respective valleys, forming moraine-dammed lakes. The glacial feed to the lakes gives them a distinctive blue colour, created by glacial flour, the extremely finely ground rock particles from the glaciers. Lake Pukaki covers an area of 178.7 km², and the surface elevation of the lake normally ranges from 518.2 to 532 metres above sea level.