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Published: June 14th 2008
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Panoramic View: Mt Cook National Park Out On The Road
We awoke from our first campervan night nice and early. It was still pretty cold, but thankfully our campervan heater gave us a lot of warmth and Britz provided us with loads of bed sheets.
Our van itself is great. Aside from a sticky transmission, it runs like a dream and pretty easy to drive. It's got the right amount of space for us and includes a sink, gas stove, fridge, cupboards, couch and table which also converts to a comfortable bed. Our home for the next 3 weeks!
We left the campsite and headed out to the outskirts of Christchurch and parked at a gondola. The gondola ride took us right the way up to the top of Mount Cavendish giving us great views over Christchurch, the Southern Alps and Lyttleton, a small town near a picturesque lake. We were even able to see the ocean. The views were pretty amazing and the comparisons to Scotland are certainly justified. Aside from the obvious climate similarities (New Zealand is on the exact opposite position to Scotland on the globe), the scenery is very similar, albeit a bit rockier
Emma at The Hermitage
Enjoying a warm bowl of soup!! due to the more recent glacial activity. As anyone who has seen Lord Of The Rings can testify to, the scenery is absolutely amazing. We took to the place straight away and it is the most homely we've felt on our trip.
After heading back down, we had some lunch and headed out on the road, with our vague maps. We drove through the townships of Ashburton and Geraldine, where we did a supermarket shop (food here is way cheaper than Australia). After a few hours driving through some long straight roads then into some random twisty ones, we arrived at our destination: Lake Tekapo.
Lake Tekapo
Coming over the hill to the lake was amazing. En route, we had the pleasure of driving through some great scenery and coming over hills to be greeted by pretty sights, but Tekapo was probably the highlight of the day. It was coming up to sunset and the brilliant blue of the water (coloured by sediments at the bottom) certainly made us "wow". We parked the car next to it and headed to the rocks near the water to chill out, before heading to a campsite. We found the campsite
a lot easier this time, although it wasn't the greatest, but was situated right at the edge of the lake. It was a very cold evening again so we layered up, turned our van heater on and cooked inside the van stove to further heat the place up. It was fun. This was followed up a cheeky bottle of Jacobs Creek to warm us up further.
Mount Cook National Park
Waking early, we fed the multitude of ducks who surrounded our van in the morning (might not have been allowed to feed them, but that would be heartless). A quick breakfast later, and we were back on the road, heading up the mountainous region to the Mount Cook National Park. After going through Twizel and passing Lake Pukaki, we arrived late morning and headed out to do the Glencoe Walk to stretch our legs. Not only does it look like Scotland, but most of the places are named after it, as you'll find out in later blogs.
The walk was a pretty easy one and we didn't want to spend too much time as we wanted to head back to the coast later on (tight timescales). It
gave us great views of the mountains though and afterwards we headed down to the Hermitage Hotel, one of the most famous in New Zealand, for a bite to eat.
The hotel itself was predictably plush and the food fantastic. It was pretty surreal sitting outside eating and being surrounded by this fantastic mountain range. There was a statue of Sir Edmund Hilary here too, as he had climbed Mount Cook shortly before being the first person to climb Everest. Mount Cook itself is the tallest mountain in Australasia, although mountaineering is mainly limited to experienced climbers. Which obviously ruled us out.
We headed to Hooker Valley which was nearby and did another walk to a swing bridge giving us a different perspective on the ranges and valleys. The final stop for the national park was in Tasman Valley, where a glacier still existed. Compared to the glaciers on the west coast of the South Island (from what we've read anyway), it wasn't anything too special. It had receded and melted so much that you couldn't actually see it due to a lake forming over and some debris from the mountains covering up. Despite that, it was actually
a nice view after a climb up and an information sign informed us that only a hundred years ago, the glacier would have covered the area we were standing on.
It was late afternoon by the time we left having really soaked in the views in the park and been impressed with what we'd seen. The drive back to the coast was twisty again, but out of nowhere, strong wind gusts threatened to sideline our van. We later found out it was an extremely windy night so it was little wonder we felt the effects on our top heavy van.
The final stop for the night was Oamaru, a small coastal town an hour and a half north of Dunedin, our next destination. After a small amount of trouble finding the campsite, we settled into another cosy night.
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