Mt. Cook

So I am still LOVING and having the most amazing time in New Zealand. I'm going to do a bunch of posts: one for every place we've been. I think it'll make reading easier and it will also help me compartmentalize the trip... if that makes any sense.

So Mt. Cook:

We took off from the airport in Christchurch in our rental car... a 2000 Nissan Primara Wagon. We named her Ellen. I took the wheel, and driving on the left proved to not be that difficult. Actually, by now I don't even have to remind myself of things like "little left, big right" or "stay left." It's all second nature. Although, when I go to change the volume on the radio my right arm instinctively thrusts straight into the door. I may have bruises...
After about 6 hours in the car driving through wine country, HUGE mountains (much like Colorado), and beautiful green hillsides, we made it to Mt. Cook. The views here were absolutely stunning. I have no way of doing them justice. Not with my descriptions, and not with my photos either. It's just too beautiful for anything to capture it.

The road to Mt.Cook just goes to Mt. Cook. It is 50km long and ends in Mt. Cook. The Village in Mt. Cook is basically just a 5-Star hotel, a cheaper motel, a cafe, and our hostel, and a gas station with gas 2X as much as everywhere else. There also appeared to be a school... but I can't believe that anyone actually lives in that town. Although, the nearest town is 40 minutes away, so that is probably why they have to have a school. We weren't really sure what to expect from the town, but once we got there we realized that we would probably be spending the evenings playing boardgames in our hostel. Which turned out to be a lot of fun. The drive was so exhausting that we passed out early the first night.

The next day we thought about what we wanted to do for the day. There were heaps of options: half and full day guided hikes up the glacier and Mt. Cook, some self guided short hikes, helicopter/plane rides over the glacier, kayaking in the glacier lakes, and even an AUTHENTIC Lord of the Rings tour/sightseeing adventure (I'm not even kidding, these are EVERYWHERE.)

We settled on a short day hike which we did in the afternoon (our alarm was still set on Australian time... so we got up 3 hours late. whoops.) We hiked up Hooker Valley and towards Mt. Cook. We didn't gain much elevation, but we did get some incredible views of the mountain peak. At the end of the trail was the base of the glacier as well as the lake from it's melting. There were huge chunks of ice floating in the water and it was SUPER windy. We hid behind a rock to have lunch, and then hiked back down. It was happy hour at the cafe when we got back, so we enjoyed some New Zealand beer called Speight's (you'll hear more about this in the Dunedin post.)

That night was again a lazy night... we played boardgames at the hostel and went to bed early. The next morning we got up and did our drive to Wanaka.

I'll try and update some more of these soon... but internet isn't terribly cheap here, so I have to ration myself. Pictures probably won't be posted until we're back in Australia... but we'll see. I should take advantage of not having a cap on how much data I can transfer.

Hope all is well at home!
Miss you all!