Day 74 | Aoraki / Mount Cook (side trip)
26 December 2022 | 22°C | 12km (to lake pukaki)
Spontaneous side trip to Mount Cook (Aoraki in Māori), New Zealands highest mountain. The initial plan was to walk as fast as possible towards Tekapo with only a daypack (“slackpacking”) and then hitch back to Twizel.
It’s a lovely sunny day, the track is flat and we watch parachutes walking over a vast plain until we reach Lake Pukake whose waters are incredibly turquoise blue-ish that day. Lots of people stopping to take photos or the lake with Mount Cook in the background.
Quick decision to change plans as it’s the closest we will ever be to New Zealand’s highway mountain. We walk to the turn off to mount cook village and put our thumbs out but nobody stops. When we decide to give it 5 more minutes, a van from the Heremitage hotel stops and a lady working there gives us a ride.
We look at the fascinating mountains from the hotelscafe, take tons of photos and visit the Edmund Hillary exhibition. How much harder his “travels” must have been compared to ours! I could have stayed there forever but we still have to get a ride back to Twizel which turns out to be surprisingly easy. We squeeze into a small car of a hippie couple and their two dogs (dackels).
Happy End of the Day: I get to the High Country Lodge in time to pick up the parcel with my new shoes. 👟🥳