Unfortunately the steep drop in temperatures led to few photo ops on the way up to Mt. Cook. Thick fog masked Lake Pukaki most of the way, clearing up with around 20kms of flood plains left to Mount Cook, fortunately we managed to capture a few snaps of Lake Pukaki’s astounding turquoise water.
The lake is fed from a glacial valley, a huge body of prehistoric ice, grinding away at the rock beneath over millions of years. This fills the water with millions of superfine fragments of rock, called rock flour. Rock flour refracts the light passing into the water and creates the brilliant colour of the lake. Every day’s a school day eh?
Mount Cook Vanishes
Disappointment is really the only word for the few hours we spent at Mount Cook, hopes that the bright sunshine of 20kms ago would follow us up into Mount Cook Village were doused with drizzle and low cloud. We could barely tell which mountain was Cook, let alone view its 3,800m summit.
Rather than stay in the wet and overcast village overnight, we elected to work our way back down Lake Pukaki’s length, through the Lindis Pass into Wanaka, a trip we’d planned for tomorrow. So after a coffee and a look around the few exhibits and tributes to Sir Edmund Hillary (excluding the five dollar note, we’d already seen that), we cut our losses and made our second trip the length of Highway 80 and Lake Pukaki – this time under bright sunlight with many chances to stop for pictures all the way down to join State Highway 8. We’d take this road around 130kms through the Lindis Valley and catch Wanaka by nightfall.
We made great progress through the other-worldly landscape of the Lindis Valley. It is truly amazing how quickly the landscape changes in New Zealand, over the course of only 20 or 30 kms we went from alpine lakes and soaring firs; through vast, grassed valley flats and into the arid, alien-brown landscape and dotted bush of the central valleys.
Creepy Holiday Park
We just managed to catch the information centre before closing, winter opening hours sternly dictating our evening itinerary. In the interests of variety and budget we decided to stay at the Lake Outlet Holiday Park which was lakeside but around 6km from the centre of Wanaka. Lovely, quiet and scenic park by day; freakishly remote, empty and scary by night. I can’t really work out what was more upsetting, the fact that it was so close to town yet so remote, making it an easy walk for nutter transient murderers; or the dilapidated and empty live-in caravans dotted around the park, past owners having met the sticky end behind every bump in the night perhaps?
We awoke, alive, to a fantastic view of Lake Wanaka. Our frugality repaying us with all limbs attached and essentially a private bay on which to enjoy the morning sun glistening off Lake Wanaka’s waters. Reflecting over bacon and eggs on the picnic bench we concluded; a long night but worth it in the end.
We changed parks that afternoon.
After hooking up in the centrally located Holiday Park Generico, we enjoyed a day of window-shopping, lazy coffees in the wintry sun, brief encounters with cheeky sparrows and free pool at the pub.
All was going swimmingly. Unsure of how many ATMs we’d see in the upcoming, more remote, surroundings we thought we’d better stock up on cash. After trying 5 different machines, each one more reluctant to give us money than the one before, we called the UK enquiries line again.
At this point I think I was pretty close to exploding with extreme customer miffedness. Or at least tutting very loudly. “If they’ve locked our accounts again..” I impotently raged whilst the music tinkled on the line.
After a very brief chat with the kind lady at the call centre it became apparent that we’d jumped a bit too quickly to our conclusion. It was 2pm in Wanaka on a Monday. That would make it 3am on Monday morning in the UK, a common systems-upgrade window. No drama, just updating their systems ‘s’all so no cash points or online banking for the next couple of hours. Blood pressure back to normal and our hungry wallet sated by tea time.