We had a short drive of only an hour and a half to Twizel. We found out from the locals, through some questionable pronunciation by us, that it’s actually ‘Tw-eye-zel’ rather than ‘Twizzle’ which was disappointing. Plenty of mullets chopping about in this small town, at times it felt more like the Stranger Things film set than an actual town. It had a really intimate feel to it with everything centred around the community.
We were staying next to some frenchies who we’ve since met again in Christchurch. By frenchies, Grace means french people, not the dogs you buy after you’ve discovered dryrobes. We hung our heads out of the tentbox for a while as the skies were so so clear and there were so many stars. We got this augmented reality stargazing app which helps you navigate the constellations etc, but it was more agg than it was worth – £1.50 for the privilege!
The next morn, Az had a surprise in store for me. We arrived at a lavender farm on the edge of Lake Pukaki, which a few weeks back would have featured bright purple lavender fields as far as the eye could see. However, over the past 3 weeks they’d harvested the lot so there was quite literally nothing to see. Perhaps a more fitting sentence to start this paragraph would be: ‘clearly unfamiliar with the lavender harvesting cycles, the next morn, I had a shit surprise in store for Grace’. Not to worry, we grabbed a lavender ice cream to justify the trip and headed toward Mount Cook National Park.
Highway 80 headed north towards Mount Cook National Park and hugs Lake Pukaki all the way, definitely the bluest lake we’ve seen to-date. The bright turquoise colours are caused by suspended silts from the glaciers (also referred to as glacial flour). The Southern Alps a.k.a the enormous mountain range spanning the length of the south island is responsible for the the long drives we’ve had recently. We were only 30km away from Franz Josef as the crow flies, but it took us 4 hours to drive around the Southern Alps and reach the town!
After driving the length of Lake Pukaki and passing Mount Cook village, we arrived at the Hooker Valley track. This 10km hike had it all; alpine rapids, swing bridges, views of Mt Cook (NZ’s biggest boi), and glacial lakes complete with chunks of ice the size of trucks. We had a slight hiccup at the first swing bridge, DOC had temporarily closed the crossing whilst a helicopter transported bridge maintenance parts overhead. I suppose by air is your only option in these remote locations. At one point, we heard a low booming which sounded like thunder and saw a chunk of glacier falling away. This just legitimised all the signposting which instructed us not to stop walking due to these sorts of dangers. Cereal bars were consumed en route and as per routine, we had a quick spot of truck lunch in the sun and headed back to the Twizel bakery.
Welsh Rare-bits 
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