Our Travel Blog: Mt Cook/Aoraki Day 1

Thursday, February 27

The morning started off at a chilly 14C and by the afternoon it was 24C. So you'll notice different layers of clothing as the day goes on.

Our lodge room bathroom floor is heated, giggle giggle. Not your average motel!

Here is a map of the village and some of the trails in the area:

We had to drive over to the Heritage (the main hotel) for breakfast. This hotel is the nicest hotel we've EVER seen! And absolutely huge! This was our view as we ate breakfast:

We checked out the humongous gift shop, nothing under $300. They even have a museum here called the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Center. $50 to discover the history of the region????

Behind the Hermitage, we found the Glencoe Walk (see map). It was short and steep but not too bad:

It led up to this viewpoint:

We made our way back to our lodge, parked there, and from there did the Governor's Bush Walk (see map). It was supposed to be a one hour loop through a silver beech forest, but somehow we ended up cutting through it and coming out the side???? Oh well, it was still very very lovely:

The forest was very abundant in ferns. Karin, if you are dividing any ferns this summer, don't throw them away, we'll take them!

We also found the Red Tarns Track, just south of the village. A "tarn" is a small mountain lake. They are named Red Tarns because of the red pond weed that grows in them. This trail passed over the Black Birch Stream, we swore we saw Frankie's phone swim past us ha ha:

The trail was so steep that we went about 15 minutes up up up and when there was no end in sight, we turned around and went down down down:

We later found out that this particular hill (Mount Sebastopol) was used as Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings. You can kind of see the flat plateau on the left:

For lunch, we took some leftovers over to the Hermitage and ate there. Anton ate a banana and a chocolate bar (his standard). Frankie had a cheese and spinach pocket from the gluten free bakery, but it was pretty dry and needed microwaving. At the Hermitage reception, she had to sign an actual food wavier and then they let her use the staff microwave in the staff room. As she waited for the food to heat, she noticed a printout called "How to get into a Guestroom Safe". Hmmm. We ate in their extremely large bar area, here's the view:

After lunch we had half an hour before our tour, so we walked 1 minute to the Visitor Center which had some interesting exhibits, like this old pair of mountain boots:

They had a display with Frankie's favourite Bible verse:

In the afternoon, we took the Glacier Explorer tour (we had to book this one 6 months in advance!), leaving from the Hermitage Hotel of course. It was 3 hours long, from 1:00 to 4:00. First we had a 12 minute bus ride to The Blue Lakes parking area. Then we had to walk 1.5 km just to get to the glacial lake.

There were 32 people on the tour so they divided us into 3 boats, we had 9 people in ours. The boat driver introduced himself, his name was Anton!!! When Anton told him that he was also an Anton, he gave Anton a huge hug. He was very funny and entertaining, and this was his very last tour ever, so at the end of the tour he ripped off his name tag and gave it to Anton LOL.

The boat ride was on the Tasman Lake, 150 meters deep. We skirted around quite a few icebergs. Unlike ocean icebergs which are 30% above water and 70% below, the water is very dense here and the icebergs sit 10% above and 90% below.

We could look straight up at Mount Cook, 3 kms straight up. Two out of three days Mount Cook is obscured by clouds, but today there was not a cloud in the sky and no wind whatsoever. An absolutely perfect day!

We were amazed at the height of the lateral moraines, hundreds of feet high. Lateral moraines are ridges of rock and debris left behind by melting ice.

He took us to the bottom of the Tasman Glacier, which is New Zealand's largest glacier at 23 km long and 600 m deep. The mouth of the glacier here is 1.5 kms wide, even though it does not look it from this distance.

We got back in time to go to our hotel room to change, then we had a reservation for supper. There are only a handful of places to eat in Mt Cook Village, so we made these reservations quite a few months ago. Tonight we ate at the Alpine Restaurant, which was buffet. We had to pay as we went in, and were in shock when we got charged $180. For a buffet!!! Oh, and a 2% surcharge if you use a credit card, but they don't accept cash...

This is the gluten free food that Frankie was able to find for her $90:

The buffet restaurant isn't even the NICE white tablecloth restaurant. We had a reservation for that one for tomorrow night but have now cancelled it after the shock of tonight.

One nice thing about New Zealand (everywhere) is that they have the absolute BEST napkins. They are technically 8 ply:

We stuffed ourselves as full of dessert as we could and headed back to our lodge. We desperately needed to walk off some of that food. Frankie wanted to go on the one hour Governors Bush Walk again, but could only talk Anton into the short Bowen Bush loop. And this time we did actually find the loop: