Mount Cook Day Tour

It's another cold 5 am morning. Again there is fresh snow on the mountains this morning.

I meet my tour van, Cheeky Kiwi, at 6:15 am for a day tour to Aoraki (I-rack-ee) Mount Cook. All of the names of places have the native Maori name included. ("A big driver of Māori place names being restored/recognised is Treaty of Waitangi settlement legislation. Many dual names and name corrections have been negotiated as part of settlements to acknowledge iwi connections to whenua and restore traditional names.")

We're off and running, and as usual I take notes of anything interesting or curious to me.

The driver Chris says,
"It's silly season, and there are potatoes on the road." I have no idea what that means, but I'm curious; and I type it out in my memo notes, so I can look it up later.... here it is. "When someone says, “It’s silly season—potatoes on the road,” they usually mean:
It’s the holidays
Everything’s a bit chaotic / understaffed / slowed down
The news (and sometimes people’s behaviour) gets a bit random. Even small incidents get outsized attention." So there you have it. I did hear that the area just completed their busiest tourist season of the year. All the kids and college students just returned to school.

Other random infomation: QT is the most expensive place to live in NZ. Avg house price is 2 million. 1.71 NZD to 1.0 USD.

Lake Wakatipu stays about the same temperature all year around, 5-6 degrees celcius (40's F). Lake Hayes is the lake preferred by locals, because it is warmer.

There's a famous story of a sheep that got lost and was found 6 years later in a cave. The sheep's wool had not been shorn for 6 years so when they found him, he was extra wooly and it became national news with everyone watching "Shrek" get his wool shorn. There's a monument in Shrek's honor.

The giant Moa bird that was 10 ft tall went extinct around 1400. BC or AD? The Maori tribe hunted them, and relied on them for food.

We stopped at Lindis Pass overlook. At 800 meters, trees no longer grow on the mountains. Tussock grass is native to the mountains as well as Matagaro bush which the natives used the needles of the bush for making tattoos.

We stopped at s local Cafe and gift shop. The chicken pie is known to be the best. Meat pies are a big thing here. Like instead of hotdogs and baseball, here it's pies and rugby. The crust was nice and flaky and delicious the chicken was perfect and it was in a gravy sauce. Personally I would prefer if the sauce was more like our traditional chicken pot pie with the lighter sauce and vegetables.

At the gift shop I bought a couple of Pee Wee the Kiwi books that came with a free stuffed kiwi. My grandson Edison loves to read books, so now I have two kiwi books and two Fiji books to read with him. His birthday is on the 29th and he will be 3. I ordered him an outdoor climbing dome with swings since he's outgrown his toddler swingset. But it won't arrive until the 2nd which is the day that I leave.

I also decided to try chicken flavored chips. It's kind of like sour cream and onion, think chicken broth... very artificial.

More random tidbits...

JAFAs is an acronym used for people from Aukland. (Just Another F'n Aucklander.) Aukland has a high population.

Gliding is popular here and good sport due to the high winds. Someone was able to glide all the way up to the north Island (JAFA region) and back.

Dairy farming is the biggest export in NZ, followed by lamb. "NZ traffic jam"- the traffic stops for sheep crossing the road.

KFC is all the rave here; like seriously these people go crazy over KFC. One guy even got married at KFC. Many families order KFC for Christmas day. Just wait till they try Chic fil-a or Popeyes!

Queenstown has a lot of construction and orange cones are everywhere. So many cones, in fact, that the town's recently been nicknamed "Conestown". As a joke, kiwis throw cones up in trees, so you can randomly find an orange cone anywhere, such as up in a tree.

New Zealand runs on 60% renewable energy, and they are working towards full renewable energy. On a good weather day, they can get up to 98%.

The Canadian government sent 12 Canadian moose to NZ way back in 1910. Six males and six females were placed in Fiordland National Park. Some were hunted and others died off. It was thought they had gone extinct since none had been seen since the early 50's; however, there were sightings of moose in the national park last year. No one has been able to produce a photograph.

Pine trees are considered a pest here, because a blanket of pine needles on the ground prevents native plants from growing, they use too much water and they are a fire hazard. The govenment encourages chopping them down, and then they spray canola oil on them to prevent them from coming back. A fire here burned hectors of pine trees down when a power line was blown over by the wind and started a brush fire.

Arriving to Mount Cook National Park, I went into the visitor center and watched a short film about the glaciers. Glaciers are melting. In the early 90s, there was no lake here. But now the lake is growing rapidly every year. Sometimes bodies are found in the lake. A body of a 19 year old was found. It was decades old and the grandson of the deceased had to come identify the body. It had been well preserved as part of the glacier. See the video of all the books of the people lost on the mountain. Each person has a full page bio with their photo.Read more