Mount Cook is one of my favorite places we visited while here so far. It was gorgeous. Kind of reminded me of the Swiss Alps or Grand Teton National Park. We arrived there on Saturday December 10th and it was rainy and very windy. We decided to check out the Hermitage which had a small museum. We learned a lot about Sir Edmund Hillary and that he practiced climbing Mount Cook in preparation for Mt Everest. Pretty cool stuff. We also watched a half hour film there which was kind of traumatic about the people who do rescues for climbers on the mountain. The main rescue in the film ended with the guy dying, but the way it was going you had no idea what the ending would
be. Needless to say, I have no desire 
to climb mountains of ice and snow. Burrrrrr.
That night we camped at a free DOC campground 
ne
ar the water canals in Twizel which is a good 45 minutes from Mount Cook, but it was great because Dave got to do a lot of fishing. I actually had some service on the phone 
and got to watch Netflix for the first time in at least a month! I was so excited, but probably not a good idea to start watching something like Stranger Things when you are in a tent by yourself at night, in the middle of what feels like nowhere while your husband is a couple miles away fishing. Ha! It was good though and nice to j
ust chill out.
The next day we had hoped to go to church, but the nearest one was over an hour away in the wrong direction so we were kind of bummed about that. We ended up cooking breakfast near the fishing canals and did a little fishing. It is so beautiful there. After that we headed back to Mount Cook f
or some hiking. The weather was perfect that day; sunny clear skies and mild temps. We chose our hike, packed our lunch and set off for about a four hour hike. It was worth it.