Mt. Cook Wednesday 1/30/08

When you sleep in a turret with windows 3/4ths of the way around you get up early. The sun got us moving at 6:00 this morning so we get all of our parts in place before breaky at 8:30. Our table partners this morning were another English couple from Cornwall. Like the folks yesterday they are on the way to Fiordland and will spend an overnight on Doubtful. With clear weather they will be in for a star studded spectacular.

Ingrid whips up some French toast with fresh fruit and a potato/cheese frittata which will define how much food we can eat for the rest of the day. We get a chance to chat some more with Ingrid and Adrian, and they are enthralled by the idea of something being in the middle of the US (unheard of) and want us to look for a lake place for them for our summer. We can now keep our honorary Chamber of Commerce membership. There are supposed to be penguins on the Otago peninsula, about a half-hour away, but Adrian tells us they are only visible at dusk and dawn. However, he has a secret place up near Moraiki where there might be penguins around during the day, so off we go.

We want to take a peek at Otago University, and we pass through on our way north up the coast. There is no buzz that comes with school being in session, but they’re all back next week. At Moraiki we find the right road and then lighthouse road and follow a dirt track we think Adrian was describing, and bingo, here is our parking area with no other cars around.

We walked down a fairly steep hill, through a gate, and follow signs to the "penguin hide." We stop to look at some huge fur seals that are worshiping the sun when a woman coming from the hide tells us that there are a couple fledgling penguins hiding in the bush nearby and if we look closely we might get a glimpse. We scurry down to the hide and try to spot some movement in the heavy underbrush. Just when we think we see something about 20 feet in, out pops a little penguin right next to the fence at our feet. Hello. He stops to greet us and then keeps moving beyond the hide. We then make out his sibling still sitting in the shrubs and he finally works up the nerve to follow his brother. He edges his way closer to us and eventually pops out by the fence, says "hi" and then crosses to the other side of the hide and back into the bush. We have penguin tours scheduled for Australia, but we won’t have this type of solitary experience again.

We take a quick peek at the Moraiki boulders (the real tourist attraction in the area) and head for Oamaru. Coach Bryce is not just a pre-game strategist, but we find he is also a game day bench coach. We catch his comment on the blog this morning just before we left so we change our route to head for Mt. Cook. We stop at the Whitehouse cheese factory in Oamaru and grab a couple chunks to go with our fruit on the ride north. We expect as we head back into the mountains that the going will be slow with a return to twisty roads, but are surprised by a straight shot up the valley. Once we pass Twizel (isn’t that a great name?) we travel along the shores of Lake Pukaki which appears to be filled with blue milk. All of the lakes and rivers near the mountains are cloudy-white with rock "powder" that comes from the glaciers mashing the rocks as they move. For the last 50km of the drive, Mt. Cook dominates the scenery in both direct view and reflection.

Mt. Cook is the tallest mountain in the Southern Alps and stands a head taller than its neighbors in the area. Edmund Hillary made this one of his first conquests before Mt. Everest, so has been in the news lately with the death of Sir Ed, but also because a chunk fell off the top making it about 15 meters shorter. It remains snow covered year round and all of the mountains here are dotted with glaciers.

We arrive at the Hermitage Hotel and Alpine Center (the end of the road) at about 4:00, much earlier than we anticipated, so we check out the property and take a walk along some of the paths carved out of the indigenous brush. There are spectacular views whichever way one turns and perhaps justifies the $1000 a night rooms at the hotel. The campsites nearby have the same view. We check out the restaurant but decide we are not ready for dinner so take off back down valley for Lake Tekapo, our destination for tonight.

The sun has dropped near the tops of the mountains and we have long shadows across the lakes and valleys with brightly lit peaks and clouds. Clouds, stuffed down into the gorges in the mountains, look like the cotton you might use as snow in the Christmas scene at home. It is just one more in a very long list of NZ sights that will be impossible to forget.

We get to our motel (Lake Tekapo Scenic Resort) in the middle of Lake Tekapo village and are in our room by 6:30. We have a nice view from our balcony of Lake Tekapo ( a whole new color) so decide to grab a bottle of wine and pizza to bring back to the room. We end the day sitting on the balcony, nibbling and sipping, watching the sun fade behind the mountains and the stars come out, and listening to the fellow downstairs play some very gentle tunes on his guitar. Magical!

How to decide which picture to use today?

Today’s local headline: Labour to lift school leaving age The Press of Christchurch
(Raising mandatory school attendance to 18 years from 16 years of age)