Mt Cook and Lake Tepako

This weekend we blew town (much to Adrian's great disgust) and headed to Mount Cook and Lake Tepako.

Mount Cook is the highest peak in New Zealand and has been scaled by Sir Edmund Hillary.  As most of you know he is the dude who scaled Everest.  Well, he's from New Zealand and has a place on the $5 bill. After driving the blooming hills here Everest was likely a piece of cake, more on that later.

Any hoo we did not scale Mt Cook but stayed at  a holiday park (super de duper NZ campground) and looked at bee yoo ti ful scenery and I got car sick.  No barfing this time just nausea.  Kids were fine, Matt was fine. I, apparently, am the princess...  as I sit here sipping my ginger tea b/c we got home 2 hours ago and I still feel green.   Big breath, enough complaining... On with the story.

We stopped just outside of Ashburton at the The Tin Shed and everyone got new shearling slippers to keep our tootsies warm when winter comes.  Except Joelle, hers are possum fur. Go figure.

It takes about 3+ hours of driving time to get there from Ashburton (someday I will do a post on our little town with pix).   After buying slippers and driving for a while we stopped at Lake Tekapo  for a stretch.

The lake is glacier fed (read really really cold) and while close up is very clear from far away has an unusual opaque blue colour due to "rock flour".  Rock flour is tiny bits of rock that is ground up by the glaciers that feed the lake.  These bits of rock give it it's unique opaque blue/green colour, kinda like a shamrock shake at McDonalds.

This picture is of Luke and Flat Malachi (think Flat Stanley,  Malachi is our nephew and a flat version arrived in the mail the other day so he gets to adventure with us for a little while till we have to send him back to Canada) at Lake Pulaki.  Same idea, but if you look closely you can see the lake colour reflected in the clouds.  It was SOOOOO cool.  This is the best pix showing that of the 100+ I took over the weekend.

Just past Lake Tepako there is the Mount John Observatory,  so we had to take a peek at the peak!  I kill me.   The road up this is about 6 inches wide and I swear we were on a 60 degree angle at times.
The view was completely worth it.

From here we went to the  Glentanner Holiday Park

Holiday parks are huge in New Zealand,  They are campgrounds with something for everyone, you can tent, park your camper or rent a bunkhouse room (like we did) which is basically bunkbeds and mattresses (it may or may not have a loo or sink) or a hotel room or full cabin which has its own kitchen etc.  Almost always there is a kitchen building with a full kitchen with stoves, fridges, microwave, pots, dishes and utensils,  at some you have to pay a fee (usually just $5) to use the kitchen supplies but not always.   There are also BBQ's play areas (some fancier than others) and walking/hiking trails.

During high season reservations are recommended and very easy to do online.   When we take some vacation and head to the North Island we will likely rent a camper and do this.

Mt Cook in it's glory:

So... after supper (or tea as everyone calls it here) we headed further down the road to the Sir Edmund HIllary Centre  we were planning to do the Big Sky Stargazing but it clouded over and that was kibashed.  We did see the Planetarium show which was way cool and learned how to find our way using the Southern Cross and the Two Sisters. 

The next day (ie today) we headed back to Lake Tekapo to go to the hot pools .  These are natural hot pools.  They have 3 different heats, 35C, 37C and 39C (the last one NO KIDS!!)  It was AWESOME.  Luke wanted to have a nap in the pool.

And then we drove home...