Wednesday 25th February 2009

Arrived in Mount Cook Village this afternoon and it was sunny! We had started to forget what that looked like. On Monday morning, we left Te Anau and drove south, following the Southern Scenic Route to Dunedin. Spectacular coastline and with the lowering cloud, wind and the waves crashing against the shoreline (where we saw it, most of the road seemed to be miles away from the coast, through forest and grey cloud-topped hills) it was easy to believe that the next stop was Antarctica. There are colonies of penguins on this coast. We saw one. His mates, no doubt, keeping out of the cold and rain. We halted in Invercargill and spent two hours in the Southland museum. The roaring 40's exhibition, about NZ's sub-Antartic islands was fasinating as was the visit to the Totaroa breeding programme. These are a species of lizard who. because of NZs isolation are a different genetic species to other lizards. Prize specimen is Henry, who at 120 years old, faces you out with a serene been there-seen-it-all-whats-the-worry-expression. Dunedin is unlike anywhere else we have been so far in NZ; a love letter to Edinburgh by the Scottish Settler it certainly is (and has that vaguely depressing look that most Scottish cities have; especially in the rain). Yesterday then we took to the streets on a walking tour, dropping in on a few attractions to get out of the weather. The Otago Settlers museum contained absorbing accounts of the history of the first settlers and we read disturbing accounts of how the Maori were treated by early European colonisers. The NZ Museum of Sport, housed in the glorious architecturally over the top Railway Station was interesting and we ended up in the Botanical Gardens. Our stay coincided with Freshers week at the local university - no doubt the bars were doing good business. We went to the cinema, where we saw Tom Cruise in Valkirie, what would Hollywood do without British character actors. The photo is of the harbour from the roof-top garden of the Youth Hostel. This morning we drove north to Mount Cook village, first through rolling farmland, surrounded by hills which reminded us of the Howgills. As we got higher, the countryside got bigger - recalling pictures of the American mid-west, with brown, tussocky flat country, endless straight roads and purple mountains on the horizon. And then we saw Mount Cook for the first time; wow. Rising above the glacier blue Lake Pukaki, its summit poking through the cloud, it drew the eye. You couldn't take your eyes off it - hard for the drivers concentration ! The Youth Hostel here is a wonderful Alpine lodge. This afternoon we visited the Edmund Hillary Mountain Exhibition, including a fabulous planetarium show about the southern sky and a 3-D film about the area which had you feeling you were flying over the mountains yourself. We aim to get up in the mountains ourselves tomorrow - fingers crossed for the weather - it's still very unsettled.