Mt. Cook

We drove up to Mt. Cook today and went for a hike along one of the trails there. It was a beautiful day. Incredible views of the snow covered mountains. We drove past Lake Pokaki which was a brilliant turquoise color – really amazing, and an interesting contrast to Lake Tekapo, which was a much deeper blue color. Different colors because of the fact that Lake Pokaki gets most of its water from the snowy mountains, whereas Tekapo does not. We brought a picnic and ate on a rock just before a suspension bridge that we then crossed over. Crossing the rickety bridge that went across a fast-flowing, rocky river was my dad’s least favorite part of the trip. He even considered trying to ford the river to get back across. Jordy’s least favorite part was hearing that we couldn’t walk up in the snowy part of the mountain, and so declared, “if we can’t get there on a path, I guess I will just have to make my own way there!” and tried to start bushwhacking her way in that direction. Zeke’s least favorite part of the day was when he tried to follow Jordy on one of her bushwhacking adventures and got bloody hands when pricked a number of times by a Wild Spaniard, a very sharp, pointy plant. The rest of us had no notable upsets. When we got back to Tekapo my parents went out to dinner while the five of us barbecued back at our place. Later we went over to Helen and Geoff’s for a New Year’s Eve celebration, but came back to our place to check out what would be on TV at midnight. The NZ midnight highlight was a motorcyclist attempting to jump a story tall 2006. He achieved no lift crashing into the 6 and plowed through the rest of the year finally falling onto the mattress on the other side of the 2. Apparently this is the kiwi way of welcoming in the new year – it was pretty hysterical but after the 5th replay we decided to change the channel. We found fireworks being set off of the big “needle” building in Auckland – a bit more mainstream entertainment.

View pictures from our trip:
December Slideshow
January Slideshow