Mt Cook & Lake Tekapo

Originally we would have left Wanaka last night to head up to Mt Cook but we were recommended to do it in the morning. Apparently the drive was insanely beautiful and worth waiting for. Which was absolutely true! It took the four of us two hours to get up there and we were all keen on doing some walk. Mt Cook is a huge national park with a shitload of mountains, glaciers and lakes. Most of it is untouched but popular because Mt Cook itself is the biggest mountain in New Zealand. We started discovering the area by doing the bleu lakes and the glacier lake viewing walk. Both small walks but it made us realize in what a beautiful area we were. If you would have lost a little bit of the sparks for NZ, you would have definitely got them back. It’s just incredible how we as humans are nothing against nature. We all sat up one of the rocks looking over at the shining bleu glacier lake, completely silent for about half an hour. Every one of us just enjoyed the silence and I could tell we all felt extremely peaceful. Although the beauty, we were all pretty cold....

In the little Mt Cook village there was one pub. Nothing much but it was warm and they played rugby on the TV. We warmed up with either tea or alcohol and played cards until the stars appeared on the sky. My instinct said that tonight was the night to get my hot water bottle out, and I’m glad I listened. Waking up The car was freezing. I wanted to wipe off the water on the inside of the window so I could see outside, only there was no water to wipe off. Even the inside was covered with ice! Getting out of the car almost everything was white, which explained the cold. Every hour spent in Mt Cook made me realize even more that this was my number one place in New Zealand. It’s hard to understand if you haven’t been there, but trust me. You’re literally standing in a valley surrounded by snowy mountains and their glacier lakes with no signal and just silence. Not to mention that we’ve been having way too much luck with the weather!

That next morning the four of us were up for a big hike called ‘the sealy tarns’ and guess what, all uphill again! 2200 steps to get to the top and many of them were dangerously icy. But that didn’t hold us back. If you were to do it on your own tempo it wasn’t that hard. I know I always end up saying ‘the view was stunning’ but it was! Every walk again, just on a completely different way than the previous one. The top Covered in snow but the sun still keeping us warm enough to stand in just a warm t-shirt. A good exercise for the knees to go down again but even that wasn’t exhousting enough. We were still fit to do another walk, the ‘glacier valley walk’. An easy one this time, it took us to the edge of the lake. Completely surrounded by blue and grey colors which made me realize it’s actually winter. Enough walking for the day! We had to make sure we’d make it back to the pub for happy hour. Drinks are, just as everything, pretty expensive in NZ but for some reason this pub had some insane deals! We made sure we had the best place to watch the lions game and made some new friends. I could’ve spent so much more time around Mt Cook but we had to move on.

Next stop Lake Tekapo! This place is known for the clear skies to stargaze at night and it has one of the best observatories in the world. It’s also the place where the famous picture from the church of the good Sheppard is taken. Unfortunately, when we were there it was almost full moon so not many stars to gaze at. Still we found ourselves a nice camping spot nearby a little lake. There were some little boats but they were all wired, except for one. Of course this caught the boys’ interests and before I realized I was rowing in a stolen boat on the lake. Like I said, a lot of fun just to travel with boys! That day there were some things we could’ve done but after 5 days of straight walking we could all use some chill time. We settled in a cute little café and everybody just did their own thing. I finally took some time to go through the 300 pictures I’d taken in this last week. We did walk up to the Church of the good Sheppard and had a nice conversation with the priest who still does its Sunday sessions. Afterwards we returned to the campsite to chill, eat and make a good campfire. The sun went down and so did the temperature. It was nice to just warm ourselves up on the campfire even though it was forbidden. We even made some new friends who were freezing their toes off. Damien and Chris would make their way to Christchurch and Kaikoura but me and Max had to go back to Wanaka to sell our Steve. We said our goodbyes and went on our last drive in the car.

We slept in the same campsite realizing it was our last night in ‘our home’. Before we could sell it there was a lot of cleaning up to do. Not only in the car but there was a lot of stuff that we couldn’t take with us. Back to backpacking! Just before we wanted to drop off the car, Steve gave us a little heart attack. The battery died of course… haha! But all fine, we found someone to help. We said our goodbyes, gave Steve a big hug and handed over the keys. Walking away and realizing we were homeless again!