Timaru to Twizel

Heading towards Twizel we stopped at Tekapo. The Russell Lupins are out and line the sides of the roads and can be seen in huge swathes in friends and along water courses. Beautiful!
Have been to Tekapo before. Decided to climb Mt John again, up to the observatory where there is a cafe which sells wonderful GF banana loaf. The walk up takes about an hour but is quite steep is really hard and on the legs both going up and coming down but the view from the top is one of the best in NZ. You can see Mt Cook the highest peak in NZ at 12,354 and many others too. Not to mention the wonderfully blue Lake Tekapo.
Overnight at the Combined Services Club in Twizel. Like many of the clubs you can stay in their car park or in this case a quiet grassy area at the back of the club. had a meal and a drink and entered their raffles. People were very pleasant and welcoming.
Next morning we set off to Mt Cook village where we had booked a trip to the Tasman glacier. Met the others on the trip at the Hermitage hotel. What a place! Would loved to have been staying there.
The hotel has a museum dedicated to Sir Edmund Hillary. He did much of his training here before he attempted Everest.
The tour was great, learnt so much about glaciers. Of the 3,000 in NZ this is the largest being 23km long, we could only see 11kms. It contains 1/3 of all the ice locked into the glaciers in NZ
About a fifteen minute bus ride, twenty minute walk and then an hour the Tasman lake.
The weather was perfect! We could only go to within 200m of the glacier as ice sheets break off and cause tidal waves. Quite a lot of new ice broken off since the day before we were told.
The colours in the photographs do not look real but they are spot on.Read more