More Places!

After Stuart Island we were at a loss. We had a little over two week before we left for Australia and no real plan. Queenstown was fairly close so we went there. Lucky enough for us so did the New Zealand National Rugby 7's tournament. We spent 2 days sitting in the wonderful sunshine watching Rugby and drinking beer. There was not a better way for my money to cool down after a crazy couple of weeks. We never bothered to look a a program (even though we bought them) so it took us all 15 hours of Rugby watching to figure out how the tourney worked, but we saw it end. North Harbour beat Counties Manukao for the grand final, but don't ask me to explain how they got there. We camped on the shore of Lake Wakitipu, which is deep, clear, and flanked by big mountains. I guess there really is a reason Queenstown is so popular.

The Routeburn Great Walk starts just a little ways from Queenstown and since we were too late to get spots in the huts we figured one day was better than not seeing any of it. Our day was a bit bigger than what they suggest, but we had no packs and fresh legs so we hiked what our guidebook would call the first day and a half then turned around and came back. 32 km by my count. Absolutely beautiful, worth almost every step. The track follows the Routeburn river all the way to it's source at the Harris Saddle with a little side trip up Conical Hill for a stunning view all the way out to Fiordland NP. On a truly clear day I would not be surprised if you could see both the Pacific and the Tasman Sea.
It was a little bit hazy for us unfortunately (I make the weather sound poor though there wasn't a cloud in the sky).

We got off the track and limped through much needed showers and laundry at holiday park in Glenorchy that night and went back to Queenstown in the morning.

We had intended to kill a day then go to Mt. Cook the next, but got antsy around noon and left around 2. I'm not sure how we missed it, but I think we crossed an international border on that drive, although then again we could have just been on a different planet. The lush green hills and water went bye-bye. We might as well have driven through Wyoming. Everything was brown. It was dry as a bone. Nothing but sheep, cattle and dry land wheat as far as you could see. What you could always see was the high part of the Southern Alps with Mt. Cook right in the middle.

The village of Mt Cook is a fairly despicable place.It is all owned by one exorbitantly priced hotel that is run under the watchful eye of the Dept. of Conservation. The one bright spot to that arrangement is that there is a campsite 5 minutes from town for $10 a night. Plus the views. In the evening you can stare straight up at Mt. Sefton and watch ice avalanches fall off sheer cliffs every 30 to 40 minutes.

We hiked up and spent the night at Muller Hut which is supposedly where Sir Edmund Hillary first decided to climb Mt. Cook, and the hut sits just below Mt Ollivier which was his first official climb. Loads of history, even better views of Sefton and the delta of glaciers that flow through the park, but you pay the price to get there. Its a 5k hike with 1100 meters of elevation gain. I was lucky enough to be carrying all of our stuff as well (I volunteered cause I'm a jackass). We spent the next couple days trying to walk off the overnight trip, the massive sunburns and heat stroke that came standard before driving back north toward ChCh.