To be a Kiwi: Camping trip to Aoraki

I left Dunedin early Friday afternoon with Lucia and Libor (a Czech-Slovak couple), Cynthia (Brasilian) and Lorenzo (Italian). The sun was shining and it was really warm (24degreesC!) so the drive was really pretty. I was surprised at how similar the countryside looked to back home. But the unplanned pause in our drive from a herd of sheep getting moved across the road was wholly NZ. For the last hour of our drive to Aoraki (Mt. Cook) National Park we could see the mountain in front of us- its grand peak stretching up into the summery sky.

After pitching our tents and having dinner we got to enjoy one of the most spectacular sunsets I've ever seen...

This beautiful preclude to the night was deceiving...none of us slept much because of the horribly strong gusts of wind and rain that tore off the outer cover of the tent multiple times and threatened to flatten the entire tent on top of us a few times! But despite waking up a little worse for the wear we were rewarded for our restless night by a rainbow that stretched in front of a mountain range next to our camp.

Lorenzo, Cynthia and I

We did the Hooker Valley track on Saturday morning. We followed the track as it wound up the valley, crossing the river twice over narrow suspension bridges, and generally getting soaked all around. (It rained the entire walk in and puddles covered half of the trail)

Although we ended up sopping wet, the hike was gorgeous. There were clouds covering the tops of the surrounding mountains but we could still see the bottom parts of the glaciers on their slopes. Waterfalls gushed down from the bottom of the glaciers, feeding into the stony-colored stream that we walked next to. There were boulders strewn across the wide floor of the valley, left behind from an ancient glacier.

The rest of the foreigners arrived late Friday evening in time for us to have a nice candlelit dinner together. It was a very classy style of camping- most of them brought all the luxuries from home and the campsite we were staying at had a public building with tables and sinks. AND the campsite had recycling, trash, flush toilets, and potable water. It was definitely not roughing it. But it was really funny to see all of the foreigners trying to toast marshmallows in the flames of the candles.

On Sunday we hiked up a different valley to see the Mueller Glacier and then hiked up the adjacent mountainside. The track was pretty steep and at times treacherous (I saw more than a few of the wooden trail stabilizers that had fallen from the trail onto the steep mountainside).

But the steepness of the track was worth it because as we climbed an amazing view of the valley opened up before us. By the time that we got up to Sealy Tarns (small mountainside lakes) halfway up the mountain we could see all the way to the lake that we drove past on our way into the park in one direction and up past Hooker Glacier to the base of Aoraki in the other direction.

While we rested at the tarns the clouds blew away from the mountain tops and we finally got a full view of the Mueller Glacier.

Mueller Glacier from the campsite.

Before driving home we stopped at Tasman Glacier, the biggest glacier in NZ. The few meters of rock rubble covering its surface hide the 200-600 meters of glacial ice filling the valley.

Looking down Tasman Valley from the Blue Lakes lookout.