The spectacular, amazing and stunning Mt. Cook, NZ

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  Christchurch, New Zealand
Tuesday, January 29, 2008

To our avid readers...  This entry is for you.  I am exhausted, but we are off on our 5 day trek through Milford tomorrow morning and will be offline for a while, so in order to catch you up on our travels, here I am... 9:30pm in a small Internet cafe on Shotover St. in Queenstown, now don't be expecting any pics yet as I'll have to take care of that on our return.  So where were we... oh yes, Auckland. 

We arrived in Christchurch at 9am and were met by a very nice man who gave us all of our paperwork and our itinerary for our two and a half week journey through New Zealand.  After gathering our bags we got into our Mitsubishi Galant or as Andrew called it, "our shitsubishi" and drove the 350 km to Mt. Cook or Mt. Aoraki as the locals call it.  Despite a near death experience due to looking the American way for oncoming traffic, it was a beautiful drive.  I should mention, after our mistake, I think the driver of the oncoming truck might have flicked Andrew off, to which he responded, "I thought the Kiwi's were supposed to be nice..." 

At any rate, we drove through beautiful hills and valleys, farms, sheep, deer, horses, more sheep, mountains, lakes and yes, sheep

Our beloved Sofitel

.  Evidently the population of New Zealand is 4 million, vastly outnumbered by a whopping 50 million sheep.   The scenery was beautiful and we were both mesmerized and humbled by the beauty of the country.  We drove the speed limit of 100km as we listened to songs by U2, Linkin Park, Guns N Roses and Justin Timberlake (Despite insisting I not put JT in this travel logue, I think Andrew secretly liked it). 

We stopped at an adorable farm house cafe about halfway to Mt. Cook and it could not have been more authentic New Zealand, complete with a lovely family with a boy and a girl who were enthralled by our American accents, views of rolling green pastures, sheep mewing in the distance, meat pies and the obligatory wool items, we had a wonderful lunch and hopped back in the Galant for the rest of the drive to the park. 

About 45 minutes before we hit the park, we turned a bend and were confronted by the most beautiful aquamarine lake called Lake Tekapo, that rumor has it has the darkest and most spectacular night sky in New Zealand.  We had never seen a lake that color before, and after snapping a few pictures, we hopped back in the car and less than 10 minutes later, there was another amazing lake, twice as big as the first and with a richer greenish blue hue

Dinner at Winnie's

.  Here we were, Lake Pukaki.  Andrew wondered aloud whether the nice family back at the farm may have slipped us something in our meat pie as what we were seeing did not seem real.  I think the words stunning, amazing and spectacular were used over and over as we drove the 40 km's around the lake. 

With Lake Pukaki in the foreground and Mount Cook and the Southern Alps rising out of the horizon like a picture from a Warren Miller ski movie Andrew and I just could not fathom how we got here.  We turned a corner and before reaching the base of the mountains, we had arrived at our Hotel, The Hermitage, which we came to learn was the #1 most famous hotel in all of New Zealand.  How we did not know that was beyond us, but we are living this trip day to day and hour to hour.  We both thanked our travel agent Meg upon entering our room on the 8th floor and we were confronted with a picture perfect view of Mount Cook and the surrounding mountains. 

A little about Mt. Cook...  At 3,754 metres, over 12,000 feet, it is New Zealand's highest mountain,and it is dazzling.  Yet there are 27 other mountains in this alpine backbone which peak at over 3,050 metres, and hundreds of others not far short of that - all making up the famous Southern Alps.  The fact that it had claimed over 200 lives did not deter us from embarking on a 2 hour hike

Queenstown lake

.  We needed to get our legs in shape for our 30+ mile trek through Milford Sound later in the week.  We hiked out to Tasman Glacier, one of the 3 Glacier's in the area and up to various lookouts to take in the stunning beauty of the mountains, glaciers, valley's and lakes.  Every turn afforded another fantastic sight and we came to realize we were surrounded by natural beauty.

After our hike we had a well deserved beer at the bar overlooking the mountains and cleaned up before our four course dinner at the panoramic restaurant.  As we watched the sun set well past 9:30pm and watched Kea birds snack on antennas in the parking lot, we enjoyed a meal that rivaled some of the best SF restaurants.  With Venison, fresh salmon from a local fishery, home made charcuterie and local cheeses, a phenomenal soup and desert, it would suffice to say that we were stuffed to the gills and would need a few days to recover from our amazing meal.  We spent the better part of half an hour before bed looking through our bincoulars at the sky.  never before had we seen constellations quite like what we were seeing in the dark sky above us.  I wish my sister Jessica was here so she could tell us what the heck we were looking at.  Needless to say it was amazing and yet again we were overwhelmed.

The next morning we woke up bright and early, still full from the night before, yet managed to have a coffee before our 3-hour drive into Queenstown

At lunch on the way to Mt. Cook

.  More mountains, tiny towns, lakes and sheep greeted us on our drive and for those of you who have driven Highway 50 in Lake Tahoe, you might have an idea of the road we had to pass.  Complete with switchbacks, one lane bridges and a few "rocks falling" signs, not to mention one "aged crossing" sign in one of the small towns (imagine a children playing sign, but instead of children there were old folks with walkers) we loved the drive.  We stopped at Jones fruit stand which was rumored to have great stone fruit, about 45 minutes before we hit Queenstown.  Upon asking the girl behind the counter where the stone fruit was, she giggled and pointed to the hundreds of apricots, fruits, peaches, plumbs, cherries and all of the other pitted fruits.  OK, lesson # 245 of this trip, stone fruit means fruit with pitts.  We left with a a few bags of fruit and a twinge of embarrassment and were off to drive the remainder of our journey to Queenstown.

Upon entering the town, we knew we were going to love it!! The city is built on a huge lake surrounded by the Remarkables Mountain range.  The range, though remarkable, did not receive their name due to their beauty, but rather because they run perfect North to South.

We checked into the Sofitel in the center of town, a wonderful hotel complete with a phenomenal bed, a flat screen tv, not just in the bedroom, but also at the foot of the enormous jacuzzi bathtub and an espresso maker that our concierge was kind enough to show us how to use as he made us to fabulous cappuccino's that were well needed before we headed to our river rafting excursion

Scenery through our windshield

. 

After a quick change, we walked a block to Shotover Street where we joined the Queenstown River Rafting Co. for our trip down the Shotover River.  After a harrowing journey and I say harrowing as we were on a one lane road suspended over 3,000 feet above the ground on dirt rock roads with no guardrails in a dilapidated bus towing 6 enormous rafts hitched to the back.  At one point, in order to make a tight turn, our front right wheel had to be suspended into thin air over the rocky ravine.  With 24 terrified passengers watching every move of our tiny driver with sore muscles, Andrew held on tight and broke into a cold sweat, maybe due to being fully outfitted in his wetsuit already, but most likely because we were seated in the front right of the bus with nothing but 3,000 feet of air and gravity beneath us.  No wonder why they don't tell you about the drive we thought, we wouldn't go otherwise.  Note to self, when the Lonely Planet says "scenic" that actually means terrifying.

Safe and sound, a bit shaken, but not defeated, we were given a safety talk on the dangers of rafting.  After being told about the possibility of death on the river, we were given the option of driving back on the windy mountain road on the bus.  Andrew still swears he would choose death over a return bus trip, as I am sure the other rafters did as nobody got on the bus

Andrew driving

. 

We were handed over to our rafting guide Kyle who I really liked, not only because coincidentally was a native of San Francisco, but also because he split his shorts clear in half before getting on the boat.  He told us it was nothing we hadn't seen in San Francisco and with that we were off.  We soon learned that Kyle had spent a better part of his life rafting through California, New Zealand, Alaska and Costa Rica.  Having most of the emergency gear on board and being the last of the boats, it was very clear that we were safe in Kyle's hands as he was the best guide and hadn't flipped in over a month.  We spent the better part of 2 hours talking about life in the states, the history of the river which was a huge mining river back in the 1800's and navigating rapids called cascade, Jaws, Mother, Sharks Fin and 170 meters of darkness in an old mine tunnel dug by gold miners in the 1800's.  There was old mining and dredging equipment on the banks, steep gorges, wild rapids, large rocks and an adorable little mountain goat in the trees on the banks of the river.

After our fantastic rafting journey, we bid farewell to Kyle and took his recommendation to try Winnie's for some of the best pizza in town.  After dinner we walked through the adorable streets of Queenstown lined with adventure outfitters offering everything from Bungy jumping and river surfing to skydiving, shotover jets and amazing hikes

Me in front of the lake

.  We could easily see why this was the adventure capital of the world. 

The next morning, we were met by Tania, our guide for the day who would take us around the wineries of the Central Otago.  We ventured off in our beautiful Holden vehicle listening to Scissor Sisters, who I gather her 18 year old daughter loves, and ventured off to Arrowtown, a charming throwback to the 1800's complete with original facades.  After Arrowtown, Tania took us to see her buddies at the AJ Hackett Bungee Jump, the oldest commercial operation in the world.  These guys were the ones who invented Bungee.  We spent the better part of 15 minutes watching jumpers jump off the Kawarau Bridge into 43 meters of air before landing inches from the river. It soon was clear to all of us that we needed a drink so with that we headed to Rockburn, Peregrine and Gibbston where we tried Pinot Gris', Pinot Noir's, Sav Blanc's and Rieslings before heading to lunch at Amisfield. 

We tasted some great wines at Amisfield before heading out to a "trust the chef" lunch under the umbrellas by the pond.  We dined on seared salmon, roasted eggplant with mozzarella and basil, grilled pork belly with a red pepper sauce, roasted potatoes, ham off the bone with rhubarb relish and beet root with vine tomatoes (not in that order) and sipped on light white wine's in the 80 degree sunshine

Andrew in front of the lake

.  We played a game of Bocce Ball on their court and headed off to our last winery, Chard, before bidding farewell to Tanya and venturing on to our pre-track briefing. 

At ultimate hikes, we learned about what the next 5 days would hold.  Over 30 miles of hiking through the #1 walk in the world, we were in for a treat.  Complete with boat trips, lodging along the way, waterfalls and beautiful scenery we couldn't wait to pack our small, tiny, little backpack with everything we would need for 5 days.  With variant weather conditions, it made it difficult, but with a few purchases from the outdoors stores in the area, I think it is safe to say we are prepared for our journey.  So here we are, after a HUGE dinner at Lone Star we are ready to go.  We will be meeting the group we will spend the next 5 days with at 9:30am tomorrow morning.  Look for another entry upon our return on Monday.  Farewell all our avid readers, until next time...

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Us in front of the Mountains	Looking at the remnants of the glacier	Mt. Cook in the evening	Mt. Cook in the morning

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