28th Dec - Arrowtown to Mt Cook

Up early to pack up stuff and get going with Christoph. Said good bye to the Jenkins and on the road by 9. It is a really miserable day and I am happy not to me biking today and to be going to Mt Cook. I had thought that I would not have time to go to Mt Cook on my bike and so it has worked out really well meeting Christoph as I can go with him in the car in the bad weather and see the area and still get up north on my bike. It rained all the way to Mt Cook Village and we could not see very much at all. We got there in a few hours and went into the information center and watched a video about Mt Cook and the history and the mountaineering disasters etc. It was really interesting.

We then sat by a fire in a cafe in town and read and chilled until the weather cleared. It turned out to be a fantastically clear evening and so we did the 3 hour return walk towards the lake at the bottom of the mountain. As the rain had been so heavy we could not get all of the way and so we climbed as high as we could and watched the sun go down. We walked back for 10.30 and had noodles for dinner and I took loads of photos of the mountain in the distance with the stars behind. It is cold up here at night when there are no clouds. Its is only at 750m but on a glacier.