Mount Cook... third time lucky

As I mentioned previously I'd been to Mount Cook twice before last weekend but had not yet successfully seen Mount Cook itself as my visits always seemed to coincide with less than pleasant weather in that area. I did see the peak up close on the flight to Queenstown but I really was hoping to see it whilst in Mount Cook National Park itself. And I did!

We arrived in to the national park last Monday afternoon and there was the Aoraki/Mount Cook staring across at me. Whilst driving in to the village I suggested, well said, that I felt we should stop as I couldn't trust it to actually still be visible the following morning. So I got a couple of photos (the ideal place to photograph Mount Cook is across Lake Pukaki but we wouldn't be there until Tues).

It was an amazingly clear evening so at 10pm we went along to a star gazing talk/chat/demo/I don't know what to call it! Anyway this went on for an hour and involved us standing outside The Hermitage and somebody pointing out different stars, planets and other stuff in the sky. They had a telescope that we used to look at stuff.. unfortunately we did see stuff but the telescope wasn't always behaving and sometimes wandered a little off course... as I found out the first time I looked in to and saw black! I have to admit that I was somewhat relived that it was the telescope just point at a lot of black as opposed to me just not being able to figure out to look through it properly! We could see Saturn in the sky without the telescope but when using that I could make out the rings. Admittedly my first thought was along the lines of "shouldn't it be bigger through a telescope?" followed by "star trek prop" it was pretty cool to see the rings... for me at least :)

The next morning it was dry (mostly) with lots of low cloud and no views. We still did the short walk up to Kea Point but I was glad that I took my photo of Aoraki the afternoon before :)