Such incredible scenery

After a chilly but good nights sleep we woke up and opened the side curtain to beautiful views of the lake beside us. The sun began to rise and through the gap in the trees the sky and lake began to display beautiful golden tones. It's hard to get up and get ready when there's such beauty happening outside that you want to watch. After a bit of a slow morning we left the lakeside behind and travelled back down the gravel road onto the highway. We stopped by in Twizel to have our first experience of emptying the toilet. It wasn't so bad and the chemicals we put in our toilet definitely made the actual drain smell a lot better. Our destination for today was Mount Cook Village, the furtherst you can go and stay near the mountain itself. Driving along the 55km road the scenery was amazing and with every kilometre you get closer to Mount Cook and the view becomes even better. Nick was regretting that I was driving as every minute or so I was asking him to stick the phone out the window to take a photo. We eventually arrived at the village and it didn't take us too long to find a parking spot. We went and visited the Sir Edmund Hilary exhibition which was all about not only him being the first person to climb Everest but also many climbers who had climbed Mount Cook, New Zealand's tallest mountain. Sir Hilary used Mount Cook as his practise run for Everest although he did say he found Cook harder. The first three people who climbed Mount Cook actually took one of the hardest routes, not that they knew that at the time, but they still managed to achieve their goal. Even being on the ground looking up at the peak you can see how quickly the clouds roll in so it's easy to see how weather conditions can change so rapidly up there. The best part of the exhibition was the films shown. We watched three in total, the first being about the mountain rescue teams positioned here at the base of Mount Cook. It was incredibly emotional to watch because it shared the rescue attempt of a climber who was descending from the mountain with his friend after making it to summit. They climbed down a rock face, the heaviest man going first to check the rope, but when Justin the second guy began to descend and with only 5 metres until the bottom the anchor came out and he fell onto the steep angled mountain face below and all his friend could do was watch him roll down 250m of ice and snow and into a crevasse. After finding him he has to make the horrificly hard decision of leaving him to climb to a hut to radio for help. After 7 hours the rescue crew managed to get him out and he was flown to hospital. They managed to get his temperature back up to 37 degrees and stabilise him only for him to pass away 15 minutes later. It was a heartbraking story and because it showed actual footage from the rescue it made it even more emotional. The other films we watched were a 3D film of Mount Cook and a planetarium show on black holes. I may or may not of fallen asleep during the one about black holes! After a quick visit to the visitor centre we headed to our powered campsite for the night in Glentanner and had the most awesome showers after a quick walk down to Lake Pukaki as the sun was setting. We're getting am early night tonight so we can be up and ready for our glacier exploration tomorrow!Read more