Time to say goodbye to Queenstown. The weather has been absolutely stunning during our 3 days here, hot and sunny with clear blue skies, nothing short of glorious! Today dawns a little less exciting with grey skies and a chill wind. After packing up the car we had one last breakfast in the delightful Eichardt's bar before setting off on our journey through the mountains to Aoraki Mount Cook National Park.

Just a short distance down the road we made our first stop at Arrowtown and luckily the sun has broken through the clouds. This is a historic gold mining village dating back to the time when Queenstown was not much more than a tented encampment and many people came in search of gold, especially large numbers of Chinese. Now Arrowtown is a quaint and charming village with many historic buildings and quiet though rather up-market charm. Along the street there are large numbers of smart cafes, all busy with people sitting outside enjoying Sunday in the sunshine. Amongst the cafes are large numbers of shops selling arts and crafts of all kinds. Best not to go in or you are sure to buy something!

We paid a small fee and went inside to visit the Lakes District Museum at the end of the main street. Although it didn't look much from the outside this is an excellent museum and well worth a visit. We learned lots about the history of the gold mining times and there was a great deal of information about the many different peoples who settled here. Downstairs there were life size reproductions of various aspects of early life: typical sitting room, bedroom, school, baker's shop, newspaper printing press, blacksmith's mining, etc etc. It was really good and we would highly recommend a visit.

After leaving the museum we popped in to the Provisions of Arrowtown to try their 'famous and obscenely good' sticky buns which had been recommended to us. Unfortunately they had sold out!! Just our luck and we had been looking forward to those! Never mind, we went elsewhere and bought a lemon slice each instead, which was absolutely delicious, if not obscenely so!

From Arrowtown it was a long drive towards Mount Cook Village and a good thing we filled up with petrol in Queenstown because filling stations are few and far between on the way, as are toilets. We didn't see many townships along the way and Omarama was about the biggest, although still very small, and distinguishes itself as having the first public toilets along the route since Queenstown which was a very long way away by then! We paused for an ice-cream before continuing our journey, ever higher, through the rolling hills. We were fascinated to see so many lupins growing wild by the side of the road and on the hillsides. They are so beautiful in in dark and light pink, lilac, blue, lemon and cream and all shades in between. A wonderful sight.

As we neared our destination we stopped at a viewpoint to photograph Mount Cook in the distance. A beautiful sight, but the clouds were gathering and the wind was strong. On arrival at The Hermitage Hotel we were directed to our room on the top floor with a beautiful room over the mountain. What a stunning sight! Our room was comfortable and a good size. It appears, however, that they don't expect guests to bring a change of clothes as wardrobe space was almost non-existent! Oh well, living out of the suitcase again! We weren't all that hungry and hoped for a bar meal but were shocked to find that the cafe/bar closes at 6pm! Our only choices were the high-priced a la carte restaurant or the over-priced buffet at circa NZD65 a head which wasn't much of a choice at all really. The food on the buffet was good, but much more than we really wanted to eat and you would have needed to eat an awful lot to get your money's worth. Hey ho, another good example of the benefits of a little competition.

Mount Cook is in an International Dark Sky Reserve which means that at night it gets incredibly dark and unaffected by light pollution. It is, therefore, a fantastic place to view the stars. We had booked on a Big Sky Star Gazing trip that evening in the hope of getting a fantastic view of the myriad of stars in the southern sky but guessed that the clouds would make it unlikely to go ahead. Unfortunately we were correct but nevertheless we were still able to enjoy the first part of the programme. This took place inside the planetarium and was a 'live' digital presentation of the universe, our Milky Way Galaxy, our Solar System and 'realtime' night sky views. Almost as good as the real thing (who am I kidding!?) but fascinating nonetheless and, if nothing else, taught us that the vastness of the universe is entirely beyond our comprehension, even if we didn't get to go outside and see the stars.