Day 54

As we woke up, we realised that a cloud of hungry sand flies was waiting for us to get out of the car. Quickly we put clothes on and applied bug repellent before knocking at Esther window to say our goodbye. The sun was already shining and warm as the wind had completely stopped. As we drove towards Mt. Cook ranges, we stopped at an abandoned rest area where sand flies didn’t follow us. After breakfast, we drove to Lake Ohau to find a walk but just ended up using a toilet at the campsite nearby. Nothing else around apart from clouds heading in our direction, we went to Twizel. This confusing town offered us information and giant chess, which Jack beat me at in a quick game (Thanks to Peter his dad!). Then we did circles before finding DOC (not well signed) and… it was closed that day for some reason. We used then the map from the i-site and went to the Lake Pukaki. We struggled a bit to find the Pukaki Kettlehole walk. The path leaded to a large valley with a particular hole in the middle (this hole was formed by a giant chunk of ice that was left behind during the glacier period and was buried in gravel. It then slowly melted leaving the hole). Heaps of rabbits were living in the area and we had to watch our steps while walking. Pukaki Lake like Ohau had a lovely bright turquoise colour.

It was incredibly windy that day and our ears were hurting. Sadly Mt.Cook was always covered by clouds. Back at Twizel we had lunch near the outdoor pool, unluckily closed until the next day! We went to the library to use their wifi. Jack had to solve some emails about his usual phone problem while I watched few YouTube videos and downloaded our missing Queen songs (the tape was damaged and won’t play anymore). The sun was shining outside but by the time we drove to the big walk around the town, the rain and wind had picked up. The loop around Twizel wasn’t too bad, especially the riverside with all the colourful lupin’s patches EVIL. We did some food shopping after that and brought chips and a sand which to share. After a short try to use Pokemon (sadly the chess pieces had been put away), we got more fuel and drove off to the campsite at Lake Poaka amenity area. The camping was huge and we found a nice spot near the river. I did an hour exercise while Jack worked on the blog. We had sausages for dinner and drove to another spot as some young campers parked in front of us and were noisy.

Entree Written By Marianne