March 31: NZ Birthday

Today we started with another great breakfast in The George. Our driver, Jim, picked us up in the hotel lobby at 9am, for our all-day excursion. (Jim’s wife, Rhea [“Ray”], was the driver who picked us up from the airport yesterday.) Today is March 31 in New Zealand. Although it is only March 30 back home in Atlanta, we celebrated my birthday today. For my birthday gift, we went to Mt. Cook National Park. The park contains both Mt. Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak, and the Tasman Glacier, the country’s longest glacier. It was a long trip, five hours one way, with a brief snack break at the Farm Café in Geraldine. (That’s the name of a town.) We had a beef meat pie – meat pies are a local street food in NZ, and they are delicious! – and some ice cream.

After our snack break, we continued our journey to Mt. Cook. The road was a one lane winding road with numerous hairpin turns and unbelievably tight curves! We continued for 3 hours until we reached Akora/Mt. Cook National Park. It surrounds both the mountain and glacier. Along the way we had another brief stop to see Lake Tekapo (tek-ah-POH) and later we passed Lake Pukaki (poo-KAA-kee). Both are man-made reservoirs for generating hydropower and providing water supply for the region.

[NOTE: apparently the government is making a concerted effort to capture Maori culture and language as much as possible. And so, it is now a practice that all public buildings must be given Maori names. The public library is called Turanga (tour-AHN-ga), the convention center is called Te Pae (tee PIE), etc.]

We had discovered an allegedly easy access trail to view the glacier and our driver was kind enough to drop us off at the entrance to this location and wait for us. It was supposed to take an hour or so to complete the flat, easy walk to the rim of a hill to view the glacier. However, the trail we took was a very steep hill, with lots of stairs to climb to get to the top. About one-fifth of the way, Patrise decided it was a bit much for her and she returned down the trail to the beginning to wait for me. I decided to leave my jacket and backpack on the spot where we stopped, because it was warmer than we had anticipated, and I did not need to lug the extra weight to the top. About 15 minutes later, I arrived at the top. (Thank God for that, but also for the Stairmaster I have been occasionally using at home! LOLOLOL)

After I reached the top, I took several minutes to take pictures of the glacier, Mt. Cook, and adjacent vistas. (See the pictures below). I then took the steps to return to the parking lot below. Once I was there, we resumed our journey traveling to a nearby hotel called the Hermitage Hotel. It has a lovely view of Mt. Cook, and we had lunch in the cafe. After lunch, we resumed the long journey back to Christchurch and The George.

As soon as we returned to the hotel, we put our things in the room then headed to the hotel restaurant, where we had an 8pm dinner reservation. The dinner was so-so, but the company was outstanding. Back to the room, got ready for bed, uploaded yesterday’s (March 30) blog post and then off to bed. We are going to begin the next day at 6:15 a.m., meeting our driver to head to the Christchurch Railway Station and on to Kaikoura for a whale watching excursion. Kaikoura is north of Christchurch continuing on our way to the top of the South Island.