Mt Cook is a winter wonderland!!

The village at the base of Mt Cook was our stop for the night and the hostel seemed pretty nice. We got our bags checked in and headed out for a walk in the snow – it was really about 3 feet deep off the tracks!! We were in search of a good area of deep snow to build our Stray family snowman but it was so cold everything had frozen! After about 30 minutes walking we found the spot and after an intense game of cut the cheese (chasing game – not farting ha ha) we set to it although decided that a snowman wasn’t enough of a challenge – it would have to be an ice house!! We set to it, breaking up big chunks of snow and ice and building the walls, we were unstoppable until about 15 minutes later when we stopped…..turns out an ice house is pretty difficult to build!!

We got our snaps inside our 20% completed house and then had a bit of fun destroying our hard(ish) work. It was starting to get dark so we had to make our way back – none of us fancied a night out sleeping in the snow! We stopped into the Edmund Hilary alpine centre on the way back to the hostel. This guy has been voted the greatest New Zealander of all time – fair enough I guess given the few danders he did! The night in the hostel was fairly uneventful – cooked dinner and watched a movie. Guess what we had for dinner……Pasta and tomato sauce that’s right….what else – it was rotten!! Night Night.

Woke up praying that we wouldn’t be snowed in and it seemed to work – no more snow overnight so we were off at 10am for Rangitata – the next stop on our way back north!! Our driver Mambo had heard from another driver that there was a world class bakery on the way there…can’t say we were disappointed to hear that news!! The chicken pies were outstanding in Fairleigh as promised – a good stop before Rangitata. We had a couple of optional activities to do in Rangitata but the rest bus seemed fairly keen just to get to our accommodation for the night….not us. We were off horse trekking for the afternoon! Laura had done it a few times before but I was a complete novice but how hard could it be……I’ve seen a fair few westerns and those boys lassoo cattle and fire guns at the same time – no bother….aye right!! My horse was called Jonny after Jonny Cash and Laura was on Debbie for the afternoon (that sounds wrong haha!!). We took it slow down through the forest then over a couple of river crossings before making our way back. In all we were out for about an hour and it was fairly relaxed – Jonny though didn’t seem too keen on the trekking – had to give him a few good boots to get him moving……he still wasn’t having it!! Laura especially loved it is planning to make it more of a regular occurrence when we get home. I on the other hand have checked it off the list and will not be participating again unless there are a substantial amount of very soft pillows on top of my saddle (I was in serious discomfort for a few days after and that was only after an hour!!).

We had a big group dinner that night in Rangitata Raft Lodge which was so good – Jan turns out to be a chilli wizard pretty much sorting out a meal for 15 people single handedly – what a guy!! We played a bit of table tennis, cranium which turned out to be a good laugh and signed everyone’s travel books ahead of our stop at Christchurch tomorrow where the bus splits up and people go on their separate ways! Off to bed but not before we had to scale our triple decker bunk beds….we were of course at the top and made sure we were extra careful not to fall out……….30ft to the ground from up there!!

Off to Kaikoura tomorrow via Christchurch – we will have then done a full lap of the South Island – time is flying!!

Craig and Laura = )