New Zealand 10 - South island Mt.Cook

Thu. Feb. 8th, 2007. Breakfast together with a Swedish family.
Then we booked a flight at the Visitors info center at lake PUKAKI for 14h, then we drove to Mt. Cook direction Hooker valley, from where we walked on to Mueller lake and two hanging bridges up to a view of the hooker glacier. Short stop at Mt. Cook village, and then drove to the Airport at Glentennor from where we flew with a small single motor high-deck machine (2 pilots, 6 passengers) passing Tasman and Murchison glacier, Hochstetter icefall, Mt Cook and many other beautiful mountains around. Impressive also the glaciers ending in a small to bigger glacier lake full with ice pieces of very large size. After 45 mins flight we turned back to Glentennor. After this we had a short lunch break and went off to the Tasman valley and walked up to the Glacier view from where we could see, how this biggest glacier within 100 years had diminished with incredible speed, and saw (as from the plane) the trace of such big glacier reduction from the Ice Age (you could see the level, to which the glacier filled the valley at that time). Near the Tasman view we saw some very peaceful small 'blue' green lakes, and could watch a KEA eating a mouse or anything similar... after a stop at the Mt.Cook village Cafe (Old mountaineers, opened by Mr. Hillary), we went back to Glentennor's lodge.