Christchurch to Mount Cook

We had an earlyish start today, arriving at the coach station at 7:45am to drop our suitcases and find a quick breakfast nearby. We boarded the coach and were on our way at 8:30am.

The first stop was Ashburton, then Geraldine, Fairlie and a lunch stop in Tekapo. We left the coach at Twizel and were picked up by a member of the Cycle Journeys team, who took us back to their depot for trip and bike briefings. After the briefings, suitcases, bikes and people were loaded into the shuttle bus for the journey to Mount Cook Village.

We’re staying at The Hermitage and our room looks directly at Mount Cook - fabulous! We’ve travelled south from Christchurch several times and Mount Cook has always been in cloud. Today the mountain was in sun all afternoon, but then the cloud descended and, apparently, rain is on the way so our star gazing expedition tonight didn’t go ahead.

Today’s blip is, of course, Aoraki / Mount Cook (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aoraki_/_Mount_Cook)

There are 85 new community cases over the last two days. They are in Auckland (57), Waikato (7), Bay of Plenty (16), Rotorua (2), Taranaki (1) and Wellington (2).