We started this morning in Lake Tekapo with a pretty steep climb up Mt. John at 8:45am. The views looking out over the lake and surrounding mountains were beautiful! At the top there was the Astro Cafe which runs into the Earth and Sky Observatory at night. We had some coffee and some banana loaf while admiring the views. We were the first to sign the guestbook in 2011 and didn’t have to worry about the order the date was written! We then walked the circuit around the top of the mountain to make sure we saw it from all angles. Then we sat and waited for a bit for the clouds to lift so we could see a glimpse of snow-capped Mt. Cook in the distance (where we were headed today). We met a woman up there while waiting who had just come from there the day before and she said the views on the drive were much nicer than anything we were seeing from up there! So we took her advice and left immediately. The walk (run for me) back down the mountain only took about 15min where the way up too 40! This woman was right, the views were stunning driving around bright blue lake Pukaki seeing Mt. Cook (NZ’s highest peak) in the background with clear blue skies.
The sun was shining making it nice and warm when we arrived in Mount Cook National Park. We met our glacier kayaking guide and geared up to head out to Mueller Lake. The wind was blowing pretty hard against our direction of travel so we were getting splashed a bit by 2 degrees Celsius water. The views of the mountains were spectacular and we got to see the edge of Mueller glacier where it met the lake. After paddling up the lake as far as we could go, we hopped out of the boats and walked to some other clear blue pools undisturbed by the flowing water. There we watched the face of the mountain in front of us, seeing and hearing a couple of avalanches since it was such a warm day. Tom (our guide) chipped us off our own samples of the 6000-10,000 year old ice! We also sampled the pristine drinking water running into the lake we were paddling on. It was nice and cold, crisp and delicious! By the time we were paddling back to the shore we’d started on, almost all of the clouds had moved so we had great clear views of Mt. Cook and some of the other snowy mountain faces around us. From there, we began our drive even farther south, stopping briefly in Twizel for some fuel, with the goal destination of Wanaka, but we’ll see where the road takes us! No booking or plans of a place to sleep tonight.
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| Astro Cafe at Mt. John overlooking Lake Tekapo |
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| Mt. Cook in the distance |
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