DAY 2 Glenn's Birthday Hike

The second episode of my South Island journey, starts on the morning of Feb 10th, with some nice French toast for breakie. When we then entered the bus it was all decorated with balloons, to celebrate Glen (One of the Americans on the trip). After some Hurrays we drove around Lake Pukaki to the Village of Mount Cook. The weather seamed to be rainy so most of us put on our rain gear. The goal of the day was to hike up a ridge next to Mount Cook to get nice views of the mountain and the valley below as our reward.
But in the beginning it seamed to be a fruitless journey up the very steep ridge without any spectacular view. Luckily though after a few hours of tramping the undulating :-) track the clouds and the fog gave away and we could get the nice view of the valley below.
Understandably most of us turn around to hike back down after about 65% of the ridge at the first nice viewpoint. But some of us, including me persevered and kept on tramping to the top of the ridge.

( Undulating= terrang som gar upp och ner dvs. boljande, men pa Nya Zeeland betyder det att man forst gar upp for ett brant berg och sedan ner igen)

On the way back to Breamar we all stopped at a stunning viewpoint by Lake Pukaki and celebrated our first Active hike ( and Glenn) with some NZ sparkling Lindauer Brut.

Back at Breamar me and newly arrived Amy from San Diego (no not the Zoo) took a quiet refreshing swim in Lake Pukaki, I was very happy to find someone that shared my passion for going swimming in cold conditions on the trip, Thak You Amy!!

The day ended with a nice outdoor dinner with Salmon and NZ sweet potatoes, and me rushing of from the dinner table to photograph Mount Cook in the perfect light ( to every ones amusement)


Martin