After Lake Tekapo it was a fairly short drive to Mount Cook National Park where we planned to spend the weekend. The campsite was at the base of Mount Sefton which is almost as high as Mount Cook, NZ's highest mountain at just under 4000m and is encrusted in an amazing number of glaciers. Every ravine seems to have a huge glacier in it. However the fine weather of the last few days was beginning to turn by the time we got there on friday but we still managed to squeeze in that evening a short walk to the Mueller Glacier with fantastic views of Mount Cook.

Mount Cook village is at the end of a 60km dead-end road - very small with just one fantastic hotel, an excellent visitors centre, a café/restaurant & a very basic campsite. Nothing else. Surrounded by dozens of peaks above 2000M , many up to 3900M it really is only geared for climbing or walking. It's NZ's highest and finest mountain range & there are absolutely no ski lifts whatsoever. The only skiing available is by helicopter - must be fantastic if you're a good enough skier & can afford over £300 per day per person for 2 helicopter rides to the top of the mountain.

The weather forecast was absolutely dire with gales & torrential rain forecast for the weekend. The gales arrived during friday night but it didn't stop Vod dragging a very grumpy Stewart on a 3hr gale swept walk to the Hooker Glacier including crossing two VERY wobbly suspension bridges. Thankfully it didn't rain and even though the gale continued all day we were able to take in the Tasman Glacier that afternoon before we decided to leave before the predicted 100mm of rain arrived on Sunday.

Down at the other end of Lake Pukaki we spent Saturday night & Sunday watching the bad weather 60km away at the end of the vallery whilst where we were it didn't rain at all until Sunday night when we got a pretty good downpour and spent a fitful night as Vod had insisted on parking for the night in a bog only a few metres from the side of the lake and Stewart, with images of Australian floods fresh in his mind, spent the night getting up & checking that the van wasn't about to be imminently swept away by a roaring torrent of water.

We woke up the next morning bleary eyed with Valentina the van in a muddy puddle of water but otherwise unscathed