Voyage to the South Island - December 26, 2009

Today started out a success with our arrival in Christchurch on time, a quick ride to the car rental station and no problem getting the rental car (thankfully). Our car is a cute little thing and fits just the things we need. Colin drove first and the first location we drove to was actually a mall! We got a great “Boxing Day” deal on a cell phone that will work in Australia as well. We then bought some essential food items at the grocery store, “Pak n Save” and were stoked when we found their bulk food items. We loaded up on trail mix, oatmeal, water, bread, peanut butter, jelly, carrots, hummus, and a bunch of fruit. Once done at the grocery store, we were on our way to Mount Cook. The drive out of Christchurch was easy and once we turned into the interior the mountains gave us amazing view after amazing view. Colin and I alternated driving and took many photographs along the way. We filled up the tank with gas before heading into the more desolate Mount Cook. You can see the amazing views in our photos. The weather in Christchurch was cloudy this morning and seemed to clear as we drove to Mount Cook, so our views of the mountain were pretty spectacular. We reached our hostel at 4pm, checked in and went for a 3 hour hike. Unfortunately, 20 minutes into the hike, the clouds came in, it got super windy and the rain came shortly thereafter. We cut our hike short after just 30 minutes and got soaked! Since we actually had so much time to hang out in the hostel tonight, we spent some time chatting with people from all over the globe. Our hostel mates included people living in Australia from Toronto, a girl living in NZ from the UK, a native New Zealander, an Israeli, a Jordanian, and an Australian (from Darwin). It was great to hear about the wonderful places we have yet to experience, and hear about other people’s travels around the world. Today’s meals were mainly our staple items, but we do plan to buy and cook some “real food” soon. There were so many sheep, cows, horses and deer grazing in the fields along the road on our drive today. Colin and I will certainly eat meat here since it is all grass fed. We have beef and venison on our list of things to eat.
Tomorrow we hope to complete the hike to Hooker Lake – one of the glacial pools in Mount Cook and will probably make our way to Queenstown in the afternoon.