That night the sky was clear with stars clearly in sight.  We thought we’d get lucky with the weather.  The next morning we had planned on doing a hike up the Hooker Valley.  When we went to Mt. Cook with the Active group – this was the second hike option.  We’d heard it had some beautiful views.  Unfortunately, when we woke up, it was snowing.  We couldn’t see any of the mountains because of the clouds and talked to people who said it was even worse in Mt. Cook.  Even as we were gathering all this information and deciding what to do, the snow started falling harder.  I can’t remember the  last time i’ve seen it snow that hard.

It continued to snow for the next 30min of driving.  Right outside of Lake Tekapo we saw some vehicles that had slid off the road.  It reminded us of the dangerous side of snow.

Oh well, it was beautiful while it lasted.  We stopped in Lake Tekapo to see how the weather was towards Christchurch.  We found out that it was raining right up the street a bit, so we decided to keep going since we’d seen the worst of it.  We arrived in Christchurch and stayed with a guy we met in Okarito named Paul.  He is a pastor at a baptist church in Christchurch and we pulled in on Saturday night.  So we went to his church, Opawa Baptist Church, on sunday morning.  Then stayed with him one more night and left Monday afternoon for Kaikoura.
By Colin and Andre’a Feldhaus

We had the choice of two hikes today – one up to Mueller Hut and one through the Hooker Valley.  Colin and I both decided to hike up to Mueller Hut.  It was a bit over 2hrs up to the ridge (only Jaime and our guide Ben went all the way too the hut – the rest of us stopped at the ridge 30min earlier).  The first half of the track was going up steps for an hour… yuck.
About half way up, we stopped for some lunch and we had just reached the snow line.  We had a few snow balls thrown and someone in our group threw a massive snow block at Russell – but I can’t image anyone from our group doing that…

Then the second half up was walking up a mountain in snow.  I can’t remember that last time I have walked in snow that deep!  It was beautiful.  We made it to the top and took some photos.

and we saw some snow avalanches across the valley….

Then came the way down.  It was much easier to make a new path on the way down because the snow was fresh and untouched (unlike the path going up which was trampled down and slippery).  So we went off the beaten track and made our own way down.  I must admit – since i haven’t been in snow in a long time – i wasn’t too sure how to walk in it.  I have never slid down on my bottom so much in my life.  Nor have i had that much fun in awhile.  I just kept walking on slippery grass and i’d just fall down and slide for meters and meters.  I think the people in front of me almost had as much fun laughing at me as i did sliding.  Too bad nobody had their video cameras out!
So this was it… our last night on our tour.  We had an authentic kiwi bbq dinner with pavlova for dessert.  Then it was all reminiscing around the table as we all shared favorite moments from our trip.  It was a bitter sweet evening as many us had to leave – but then excited to have met and had these experiences.  But we did have one more half day tomorrow…

by Colin and Andre’a Feldhaus