Saturday 26th May

As planned I headed to Mt Cook today. We had beautiful weather, with a crystal blue clear sky which highlighted the thunderous and magnificant Mt Cook on the horizon. Bus driver 'Bill' recommended a walk up the Hooker Valley towards the mountain, so I took his advice and followed the signs upwards. The walk proved easy actually, with no challenging hills, but the scenery wasy incredible. It only took two hours to reach the glacier at the foot of Mt Cook, but the views were outstanding. Along the path were two large swing bridges over the river that powered down from the glacier, forming two large glacier lakes enroute. Within the lakes were large iceburgs stationary but dominating. Along the way I bumped into a guy called Frederick from the Netherlands, who I determined, is a newly qualified physio! So we spent most of the walk comparing the different health systems and physio in different countries! Although the walk turned out to be an easy four hours, it was certainly worth the beautiful views of the tallest mountain in NZ and with the cascading waterfalls and snow peaked mountains, its certainly an extraordinary place to hike. When we were near the Mt, we heard a thunderous noise, which we presume was ice breaking away, well we didn't hang around to find out!!
I just had a text from Richard, who was on the Magic Bus earlier in my trip, to say he's just leaving NZ but to drop in to his hotel in Christchurch, because he's left some beers for me behind the reception! I've met some great people during my travels in NZ, I'll certainly do my best to keep in touch with them. Well tomorrow I'm onto Christchurch, I believe Lynne is on the bus so I'm heading back to the YHA to try and find her....