You can get to Aoraki or Mount Cook by taking the Intercity from Christchurch to Twizel and then book the shuttle – The Cook Connection, which will reach Mount Cook. You can do many things there. I did 2 treks – the Sealy Tarns Trek and Hooker Valley Trek and also did a glacier hike.
I checked into the YHA again, I think it is the only hostel at Mount Cook. It’s a cosy little hostel with views of the mountains from the window.
There’s no grocery store at Mount Cook though, if you’re planning to cook. But the YHA hostel does have a small stash which they can sell to you but at a slightly more expensive price. The food I remembered that they have are bread, milk, juice, jam, soup, instant noodles, pasta and pasta sauce. There should be more, you can call them and ask 🙂
So I decide to splurge a little and do a glacier hike, since I hardly spend on anything during the trip and did all the free stuff like hiking… ;P
Booked the heli-hike with the YHA and they even give me a $50 discount… how awesome! The glacier hike took 3 hours, where 2 hours is on the ice… Anyway here’re some pictures of the hikes
The next day, I met a German girl from the hostel and we went to trek the Hooker Valley Trail. If you have a car, you can actually drive to the start of the trek. But if you don’t have a car, like us, you would have to walk an extra 1 hour from the town centre to the start of the trek, which is not bad, walking amidst the lush greenery and enjoying the views of the mountains. The trek took 5 hours… and is mainly flat all the way…
Anyway, here’s a picture of the view of the mountain from our hostel window…
The next day, I met a fellow backpacker in the hostel and we decided to do the Sealy Tarns Trek together… This trek has a total of 2200 steps. It was so exhausting… but we made it to the top! and the view was spectacular! 😀 Anyway, before that, here some photos of the backpacker that we stayed in
Anyway, the next day, I decided to do the Tasman valley trek… it’s a short trek, but you have to cycle half an hour there… I’m a really weak cyclist, so you would probably reach there faster… When the trail starts to split into 2 paths, take the path that says it’s going to the Tasman River…
Thats all for this post please do see my other posts on other towns I have visited too 🙂 thank you!
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