Cromwell and Mount Cook

We had four days to get to Christchurch and two potential routes. The first option was to head south to Invercargill, before driving along the east coast road to Dunedin. The second option was to head north east through the central mountain belt to Mount Cook before meeting the coast further north. Having sought advice from several kiwis along the Routeburn Track, the second option proved by far to be the most popular.

After a tiring few days we kicked things off with a short hour drive to Cromwell, a famous Pinot Noir region. Our first stop was the Sunday morning formers market in the Heritage Precinct of the town, where old buildings have been preserved and turned into a local history museum following the creation of Lake Dunston reservoir.

After stocking up on far too much local cheese we dropped off the camper van at a great freedom camping site by the side of the lake and headed out along the self guided 5km “Four Barrels” walking wine tour. This was an excellent way to try an abundance of wine on a budget; the ‘tasters’ seemed to get larger at each winery we went too and the scenery was beautiful.

We would definitely suggest eating at one of the stops as Claire in particular was a little sloshed by the time we’d finished at winery number three, where we decided to call it a day and head back to the camper to devour the cheese from earlier to soak up the wine!

The next morning we set off in search of Mount Cook. Our journey north took us through the beautiful Lindis Pass, where we had a brief stop to admire the mountains before continuing up the road to Twizel where we had hoped we would be able to hire bikes to complete a section of the Alps2Ocean Great ride.

Sadly ‘The Jollie Biker’ was jolly well closed when we arrived so we continued on four wheels to Lake Pukaki, a 20 mile long bright blue lake, which looked stunning with the Southern Alps in the background. At the far end of the lake is the village of Mount Cook (and also the location for Lake Town in The Hobbit movie) where we parked the car and set off on foot further up the valley hoping for a glimpse of the top of the mountain that gives the village its name.

Unfortunately, up this end of the lake the weather was less accommodating and rain and cloud meant that we weren’t able to see much further than the lower slopes from the glacial lake at the end of the valley. We did enjoy the snowy surroundings though, as well as being able to spot some Mount Cook Lilies at the side of the path.

We popped into the Department of Conservation visitor center back in the village to look at the exhibitions about early New Zealand climbers (including Edmund Hillary), who had all honed their skills in the area. One story we read was about New Zealanders Tom Fyfe, Jack Clarke and George Graham who decided to climb the mountain before the Brits or Americans could get there. They summited on Christmas Day 1894 just before the first foreign party arrived to steal the glory. Not wanting to steal any glory from the Kiwis ourselves we left the summit to them.