Mt. Cook National Park

A very special highlight of our trip to New Zealand was the Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park in the New Zealand Alps.

Mt. Cook (called Aoraki in Māori) is the highest mountain in New Zealand (3,724m). A Māori legend tells of Aoraki and his three brothers, the sons of the sky father Rakinui. While on a sea voyage, their canoe capsized on a reef. As the brothers tried to climb onto the canoe, they were transformed into stone by the icy southern wind. The canoe became the South Island (Te Waka o Aoraki), and Aoraki and his brothers became the peaks of the New Zealand Alps.

When we drove to Mt. Cook Village, it was snowing on the mountaintops for the first time that winter. We had already noticed the change in weather in Queenstown because it sometimes got quite cold overnight in our campervan...

However, we took advantage of the bad weather to visit the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre. Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to climb Mt. Everest, and he was a New Zealander. In the museum dedicated to him, you could see some exhibits and watch a documentary about him on a movie screen. Perfect for escaping the grim weather.

The next day was luckily sunny (but no less cold), so we set off on the Hooker Valley Track early in the morning. A leisurely hike to the glacier tongue of Mt. Cook. The mountain scenery was breathtaking! We were able to tolerate the cold because it was so cold overnight that even the puddles froze. Since we weren't equipped for such weather, we had to improvise and use a pair of socks as gloves haha