Hello everybody,

We are now in Twizel, the closest town to Mt Cook. The drive only took 1.5 hours so a short one for us. Once in Twizel we could see Mt Cook from here, remember it's still 60km's from Twizel so that gives you an idea of the scale of this mountain, but some cloud was rolling over so we decided after speaking to the experts to go the following day as the weather was going to be very clear with no cloud till mid afternoon. So we went up to the Lakes. Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapu. We had a picnic with gorgeous back drops and had a walk around. It's so nice here but the only thing to make it perfect would be for no coaches full of Chinese :o)

The following day, Mt Cook day and the sun is shining with not one single cloud in site, yay! So off we go and the scenery was amazing. You have to see the photos to see what we mean but even though they're lovely, they don't do it justice and you have to see this awesome mountain for yourself to fully appreciate it. We spent around 5 hours up there with lots of walking and also looked around Mt Tasman as well which is just as spectacular. Just a shame about the glacier which has almost gone due to US polluting this beautiful planet. If you see the photo of the glacier, only 20 years ago it would of been all frozen and only a 100 years ago it would of been 50 metres higher than it is now :o( The views were amazing but you couldn't help but be a little sad when you see for yourself what we're doing as a result of not caring for the planet and global warming. Forgive us for going on a bit but we do only have one planet, lets try a little better! But ending on a high note we loved our day here at Mt Cook National Park and we can't wait to come back again and have a helicopter ride to the top of Mt Cook glacier, maybe on our honeymoon :o)

That's it. Tomorrow we head up to Greymouth, hope it's nicer than it sounds! Mt Cook is one of our highlights and took our breath away but you just have to see it for yourself. As it's better than any photo you've ever seen of it.

Speak to you all soon, love Darren, Gemma and George xxx xxx xxx