Wanaka - Mt. Cook - Lake Tekapo

After walking best part of 100 miles, our legs were in need of rest and decided we would allow a rental car to take care of getting from A to B. We stopped over in Queenstown for two nights, watched over the jagged Remarkables Mountains and strolled around the streets taking in the sights. We weren't going to do any thrill seeking activities just yet!!! We jumped into the hire car and made our way through the beautiful old gold mining village of Arrowtown - it's autumn here and colours are so vivid! We drove through Wanaka for a quick lunch stop as we'll be visiting here again (a few times!) and admired the tranquil lake that the town sits next to.

Queenstown

Arrowtown

Wanaka Lake

Our final destination was Mt Cook - Australasia's tallest at nearly 4000m. The accommodation here wasn't hard to choose, YHA or a 120 year old 5 star hotel - we'll leave that for another time! The peaks looked quite daunting yet we donned on our gear and decided to hike half way up Mt Olivier, Sir Edmund Hillary's first accomplished peak! We were entertained by avalanches on the distant glaciers and ever-looming Mt Cook. We also clambered along and across New Zealand's largest glacier (Tasman) before relaxing back at the hostel.

Hiking up Mt. Olivier

On Mt. Oliver with the Mueller Glacier behind us (Nic had just farted...)

Tasman Lake at the end of the Tasman Glacier

We would spend the next night and day at Lake Tekapo which was just so relaxing. A quick visit to the observatory - this place is competing for the new UNESCO world heritage area for the skies! It's apparently one of the best places to check out the stars, very dark at night, however not clear enough when we were there...

Exploring the observatory

View of Lake Tekapo from our hostel