Mt Cook

We left Wanaka at 8am, hitting up the supermarket for some breakfast pastries on our way out.

We drove through Highway 8 and Lindis Pass with some low cloudy skies. Arriving at Twizel an hour 45mins later. Here, we filled up with fuel and headed the 45mins to Mt Cook.

Our drive in had low cloud for the entirety, but the ground level was clear. We were able to see the lake and part way up the mountains. Their true majesty was hidden from us.

We parked at 11 am and visited the worst toilet I have ever encountered in my lifetime. Apparently, the water is shut off for winter, so other toilets are closed. Anyway a blind person who had too much curry must have visited the toilet. After this trauma, we set off on our way along the Hooker Valley track.

The kids were fine with the distance, and we fed them sugar to keep them going. As we hiked in, we could see glimpses of the mountains above as the cloud began to part. We hiked through, and by the time we had reached the second bridge, the clouds began to disapate. We reached the third bridge. Rock hopped a bit for some nice views and finally reached the lake with mostly clear skies about 1 and a half hours later.

The scenery is spectacular, being surrounded by these towering snowy mountains. We stopped at the end of the track and had some lunch, vegemite on corn thins at son's request. Once he saw people throwing rocks onto the mostly frozen over lake, he was very keen to do so as well.

So we headed down to the lake shore, rock and ice were thrown, loads more photos were taken. At about 1:30pm, we headed back towards the car, now marvelling at all the sights that were no longer covered by cloud. We kept saying we were sure there were awesome mountains above the cloud, now we were able to see how amazing they were.

We still kept stopping to take so many photos and arrived back at the car 4 hours after we set off. Our drive back towards Twizel was equally photogenic without the cloud cover. We kept looking back to see the spectacular views, stopping on the side of the road to photograph them even more.

At 4:30pm, we checked into our accommodation, then went into town to eat at the Ministry of Works, where the food was lovely.Read more