Day 5. Tuesday 11th November 2003
Mount Cook - Lake Ohau

After breakfast drove from Peter's Lookout to Mount Cook. I drove the van for the first time and was quite impressed with myself—and I didn't stall it like Jeff did.

The roads out here are really quite, all you seem to see are the occasional other camper. Mount Cook area quiet too, nice visitors centre where we obtained our basic,cheap map for getting to the Hooker Glacier. It was a great walk, about 8 miles round-trip. At points it was extremely windy with really sharp gusts, especially in open and exposed areas. There were quite a lot of walkers on the route, most of who were Japanese. We crossed two high suspension bridges, I still have visions of Jeff holding on for his life in the wind! We made it all the way to the glacial lake and it is the windiest place I've ever been in my life (and bitterly cold).

Jeff and I went on a little further than most of the other walkers to view the snout of the glacier better, there was only me and him there. We took a quick piccey and left although Jeff needed to answer the call of nature and decided to take one in a stream that lead down to the glacial lake. I said "quick Jeff, the glacier's melting". We made it back to the visitors centre and got hot drinks in the cafe (good coffee). The cafe was called the Old Mountaineers and was opened in July 2003 by none other than homeboy Sir Edmund Hillary.

We then drove to Lake Ohau to set up camp for the night. We tried looking out for a location of The Lord of the Rings filming that took place outside Twizel but couldnít find it. It's impossible to tell were things were filmed as, quite rightly, they've made sure everything was left as it was before filming. Anyway we found a really nice spot in the woods by a small lake. Loads of birds around. I'm just sitting here and saw three rabbits hop out of the woods. Only one other camper here, a guy fishing the lake over the other side. Very picturesque and very quiet except for the rustle of wind in the trees. To Queenstown tomorrow.