Day 140 - Aoraki / Mount Cook national park, South Island - Sunday 4th March 2012

We woke to the sound of tourist's feet around the van snapping the view of Mt Cook. With our breakfast on the bench in view of the mountains and lake done, we started our drive to Aoraki and the Mt Cook national park. The drive was only a couple of hours and within an hour the snow-capped mountains completely dominated the scenery - definitely one of the most amazing drives we've ever done! It's not surprising though as of the 27 NZ Mountain's over 3,050m, 22 are in this park. The highest is Mount Cook and at 3,755m it's the tallest peak in Australasia.

We parked up and started our walk to the Hooker Valley - the weather could not be more different to yesterday, bright sunshine and even quite hot! 10 minutes into the walk we came across a memorial to all of the people who had, as they put it, perished in the national park - a comforting thought as we were about to start our 3 - 4 hour walk into the Valley!!

The walk was pretty amazing, every corner provided a better view and we even crossed two swing bridges across rivers. After about 2 hours we finally arrived at the Hooker Glacier; it's got to be said that it's not the prettiest glacier around as it is a greyish colour but it didn't stop it being a cool sight!

We stayed a while, took in the views, drank some spring water and built some Tibetan prey towers with stones - then we started the long walk back.

Exhausted we pulled up in the DOC campsite and with Mt Cook in the background, settled down for dinner and bed.