Mount Cook

We had another long journey to do this morning so again we left the hostel at a reasonable time. We wanted to drive over to Mount Cook village to take a walk and check out the mountains. It took us a few hours to get there and when we eventually turned off the main road we stopped to take in the lovely view of a lake with the mountains rising beyond. It was quite sunny at this point but incredibly windy. Matt was driving and he could feel the strength of the wind against the car. But it turned in to a rather nice drive and when we made it to the village (also called Aoraki) I excitedly walked over to the i-site to get information on walks while Matt had a little nap in the car. 

With maps and information on where to go we drove five minutes down the road to the start of a walk to a lake that sometimes has ice floating on its surface. It would be a three hour return walk which we felt was perfect. When we parked up it was lunch time and because of the wind we thought it best to eat in the car. I didn't want my sandwiches to fly away. We also wrapped up warm as it wasn't the warmest and had started to rain. We started the walk though and immediately got drenched but continued on because we didn't want to give up. The rain didn't stop and we could barely see anything in front of us because it was so misty. We went over two swing bridges and managed to see part of a lake (not the one we wanted to get to) until we finally gave up. We'd been walking for 45 minutes and had to turn back and walk the same distance so we did try. I felt a bit like we'd been defeated though but warmth of the car was lovely on my cold legs that were feeling rather sore. 

Back in the car and feeling warmer and a little dryer, we drove on to lake Tekapo which took us around an hour. When there, we tried to find a hostel to stay at but everywhere we tried was fully booked. As it was only about 4pm we thought it best to drive on further and stay at a different location. Therefore, we drove for another hour to a little town called Geraldine. Here we found a lovely hostel with very accommodating owners. It was empty apart from one Chinese girl so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Matt played some piano for a while before we went to the supermarket to buy our tea. We had sausage pasta which isn't the most exciting but it was the cheapest we could get. We did some laundry after tea and booked our flight from Christchurch to Sydney for the 5th of October. Matt is coming home as well but has decided to have a stop off with me in Sydney and then a week in Hong Kong with a friend from university before he makes it back to the shire. The end is nigh.