I arrive at Mount Cook on Monday evening, and at the time it was possible to actually see the summit. I went for a walk up the Hooker Valley the next day to get a closer view, but unfortunately the clouds were a bit low and it was only possible to see about half of the mountain. It then started to cloud right in and I had to beat a hasty retreat in front of a strong squall!
The weather got even worse - I think that Wednesday was probably the wettest day I have experienced so far in New Zealand. It started raining at 9am and was still raining extremely heavily at midnight. Luckily there was a good supply of videos and board games at the hostel so several of us spent the day watching films and playing Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit.
On Thursday I caught a bus down to Lake Tekapo - by now it had finally stopped raining, and there were some great views as we drove away from Mount Cook. If only the weather had been that good the day before! The hostel had a stunning view over the lake which is a vivid blue colour and proved to be an excellent place to sit in the sun and read a book.
Other than the small village at Lake Tekapo, there are no other towns in the area. This lack of light pollution, combined with very clear skies, makes Tekapo an ideal place for astronomy. In fact, Canterbury University has set up an observatory there. As the weather was fine, I went on a starwatching tour on Thursday night which was really quite spectacular. I saw several shooting stars and satellites and had the major constellations pointed out. Whilst I can now identify the Southern Cross, I think that more practice will be needed before I attempt to navigate by the stars. However, the highlight was definitely the views through the telescope of Saturn, including its clearly visible ring, Jupiter and the craters of the moon.
On Friday I climbed up Mount John, which overlooks Lake Tekapo and has the Canterbury University Observatory on top of it. Watching the sun go down over the Southern Alps from the top of Mt John was quite a sight.
Click HERE to see the photos from Lake Tekapo.
I then travelled north to Peel Forest where I went white water rafting today on the Rangitat River. Absolutely brilliant fun, although the water was rather chilly. We were kitted out with wetsuits though, which was a good thing as we did end up spending a fair amount of time in the water.
At one point we were given the chance to swim down some of the gentler rapids, which most of our group did, before jumping of an 8 metre high rock into the river. No problems with that compared to my previous 134m bungy jump!
Things got really funny on the last couple of rapids of the day where we managed to flood our raft. Then I fell out, and quickly discovered why the rope around the outside of the raft is called the "OS Line", as I did indeed say "Oh Sh*t" as I hit the water. For his final trick, our guide placed the raft right up against a wave, got everyone in the front of the raft and managed to get a couple of us (including me again!) to get swept out. Good job there were hot showers and a barbecye waiting for us when we got back to the rafting base! Click HERE to see the rafting photos.
