Friday 11 April
To Mt. Cook

After a night of nearly a full moon outshining the famous darkness of Twizzle, we had to go to the north end of Lake Pukaki to be near the foot of Mount Cook. This is the tallest peak in New Zealand and purportedly where Edmund Hillary cut his teeth on mountain climbing.
 
We stopped on the road about 30 kilometers distant for this portrait before we got too close.

We stopped at the Vistor Center, peeked through the windows of the Edmund Hillary Museum, and spent time (and money) in the gift shop. In the hotel wing of the building was this interesting water feature of salmon swimming upstream.

Restroom fixtures are sometimes creative and interesting. In Japan, I though that I wanted to capture the various designs of urinals. What was interesting in the visitor center restrooms was the "sink" for hand washing. Seeming to be a flat level stone where the water would splash down. The water pressure didn't make the water splash and the stone was slightly tilted toward the wall where it ran in a trough and down the drain.

After the visitor's center, we parked near a trail head and had another of our typical lunches. The weather has been good to us.

Since we haven't been in the peak of mountain climbing condition, we decided to take the hike involving the least amount of time. That turned out to be Governor's Bush Walk.

It was rated as a 1 hour (with return) hike and involved a bit of climbing. This was not the steepest incline.

Always looking down to assure sound footing, Bev came upon this rock face looking back up at her. She captured it so now she has its soul.
 
It was interesting that at the latitude we were still seeing ferns, mosses, and palm-like trees.

After about forty minutes of climbing, we finally reached what we supposed was the peak of the trail. We had climbed approximately 100 meters (300 feet). We had hoped to capture the peak of Mt. Cook from the trail but it was mostly obscured by clouds. Part of the peak is barely visible through the clouds.