7th March 2004
We got up around 9:00am this morning, checked out of the lodge and went in search of breakfast. We had bacon, sausages eggs and toast at the Observatory Cafe and then headed off to Mount Cook.
It was a little overcast and the tops of the mountains weren't visible but the cloud lifted as we drove along. Once we crossed the dam at Lake Pukaki we turned right and headed alongside the lake with Mt Cook ahead of us.
Many of the bridges we have encountered in our journeys are single lane. We encountered some of these again. When confronted with a Give Way sign on these bridges one must be careful that a car is not approaching the bridge from the other direction before proceeding.
We took this picture on the side of the road. It is the view as you approach Mt Cook Village. We continued on into the village.
After a cup of tea at the chalet and look around the visitors centre we decided to head for the Tasman Glacier terminus. This is a lake of ice melt at the head of Tasman Glacier. The glacier is 29 kilometres long and you can drive quite close to it. From the car park it is about a 20 minute walk .
Click on this photo to see a larger version. The front of the glacier (thats the blue and white face under the grey dirt in the center) is covered in moraine. Moraine is the broken rock and dirt the glacier has picked up as the glacier chiselled its way into this valley.
The lake itself is muddy in appearance with large chunks of floating ice banded with black and grey frozen dirt.
This photo was taken from the top of a small hill that was covered in small stone cairns, obviously built by intrepid travellers to mark the fact that they made it to this spot. We built our own cairn and headed back to the car. Among the photos at the end of this page is a picture of these cairns.
Sadly, after getting back to the car it was time to get underway and head home. We stopped in Timaru at our favourite pub there (The Hairy Lemon) and had a meal. We then wound our weary way back to Christchurch. Marisa kept looking back at the mountains. I suspect I didn't bring all of her back with us. Some of her is still back at Aoraki. We are planning a trip back to land on a glacier in a ski plane with "Aoraki Mount Cook Ski Planes". I can't wait!
Enjoy some more of the photos of this amazing trip. Click on any of them to see a larger version.
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--Brook
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