Day 6 – Today, New Zealand is Closed 

Emails have told us that at this stage, we should be boarding a helicopter and visiting the peak of Mount Cook today, but looking outside this morning makes me second guess that optimism. Until we know for sure, it’s all systems go! 

This morning we had a short walk planned, but we sort of messed up our timing. When we were setting alarms last night, all information we found suggested leaving about 1.5 hours for the Hooker Valley track walk, but looking again this morning suggests that that is a pretty optimistic estimate, and in reality we should be allowing about double that. It’s absolutely something I want to do, so I was pushing to get us going!

We were on the road and heading towards the start of the track when the weather started really turning. So far, no email saying the tour is cancelled, so onwards and upwards. We made a quick toilet stop at an information centre and cafe which is also the base of a different peak flight tours company. As I was waiting by the front desk for Drew, I heard the team start making phone calls to customers cancelling their tours. This was the first bad sign. When I heard that the reason they were cancelling is because of wind recordings of 170km/h+, I kind of lost all hope for ours. But still nothing from our tour company. We bought Drew some warm socks while we were there, and chatting with the clerk gave us some more bad news. The track we were aiming for this morning was also closed due to winds. Bummer. We will try again tomorrow. But the woman helping us gave us some pretty good tips for other tracks that would be open that we could check out instead. 

With our new socks in hand, we headed out to the car, made one more email check and…. Yep, tour cancelled, and no more bookings for the next 2 weeks. Bummer. We will have to do it next trip! At this point the wind was pretty nuts on the roads we were on, and the rain was getting pretty wild, so as disappointed as I was to not be going on this bucket list tour, I am thankful that we are not getting on a helicopter in that wild weather, to be dropped off on a glacier to hike it. 

But because I’m stubborn and refuse to waste a day of this holiday, we were set on getting out, even in the rain! We made our way to the start of the Tasman Valley walk, armed ourselves with as many layers as possible, and braved the conditions. The tip from the clerk who gave us this suggestion was to follow all signage towards the river. So we walked for about 20 minutes, questioning whether this was a good idea, slowly losing feeling to all extremities, when we found ourselves cresting an incline and coming face to face with the river mouth that was completely full of icebergs. Icebergs. That was not on my bingo card. I was completely in awe of this sight, I didn’t care that the rain was making its way through my pants and into my shoes, that I could no longer feel my right thumb or that my hair was dripping down my back. This. Was. Worth it.

Mother nature let us have our time here, but told us when it was time to move on with a flash of lightning and a thunderous rumble. We listened and made our way back to the car with a memory that I will hold onto forever. 

We were both completely soaked through, and Drew was doing his best impression of a Santa Claus garden gnome with his red cheeks and nose, so we opted to head back to the accommodation and warm up before we head out to our next activity. 

We took the rest of the afternoon pretty easy; Drew had a nap and I caught up on blogs. We had decided when we first got the news that our day’s plans were changed, that we would spoil our minds and bodies and booked a 90 minute session at the Omarama Hot Tubs for this evening. It was a lovely way to end the day watching the sun go down over the mountains from our private hot spring.