PERFECT DAY # 1

PERFECT DAY

 It's just a perfect day ....

Time for a new series and this time not one that involves bitching and moaning.

Perfect days - hopefully we have all had them and, even more so, hope that we've all had plenty of them.
I'm going to trawl through my memory to bore regale  inform you of them as I remember.

Not today, even though it's been OK. We've been indoors all day as the weather is a bit crappy but I've brought in wood, set the fire and will cook frittata for tea. This with wine and followed by listening to the All Blacks/Lions Test on the radio (The Old Girl will watch a DVD) will be the evening.

Perfect Day # 1.

The first one involves The Old Girl (it has to as she's hovering about, albeit on crutches and might read what I'm writing).
We were living in Christchurch and, one winter's weekend we decided to drive to Mount Cook (Aorangi).

One of the great things about our years in Christchurch, apart from the lovely city that it used to be, was the opportunity to get to the great scenic parts of the South Island relatively easily and cheaply.
We left early on a Saturday and drove leisurely to The Hermitage, taking in the scenery and stopping for lunch at Lake Tekapo. At the edge of the lake is an old stone church that is an iconic New Zealand tourist attraction but still great to see. We were there late morning on this day and luckily it wasn't being swarmed over by busloads of tourists.

From Tekapo it was  a shorter drive to Lake Pukaki and then to The Hermitage at Cook. Lake Pukaki is where the end of the glacier falls into the lake which is milky and belies the extremely cold temperature it must be at. We stopped and marvelled at the disintegrating glacier. The day was lovely - blue sky and crisp clear air.

At The Hermitage where I'd made a booking the previous day we checked in to our room which had a balcony with a view looking up the valley to Aorangi. We dumped or luggage (one bag for an overnight stay) and changed into shorts, woollen tops and robust tramping boots and set out for an afternoon walk. Cook (Aorangi) is, like most of the other New Zealand mountains (Ruapehu, Tongariro, Egmont (Taranaki), Ngaruhoe, Tapuaenuku etc), magnificent. The majesty doesn't come merely from its size but from some kind of spirit that it has. A stillness and brooding kind of like a challenge - come and see me if you dare - kind of thing.

We walked closer to the mountain for a couple of hours seeing only one other person. The sky was still blue and the air crisper. The mountain stillness seemed to amplify any small sound - screech of the keas, rifle-shot crack of breaking stone, distant rumble of a mini-avalanche, the crunch of our boots on the track.

We returned to the hotel in the late afternoon flushed from both the walk and the experience we shared. A hot bath, change of clothes, wines before a blazing fire, a great dinner and looking at the stars from our balcony before bed completed the day. A perfect day.

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This wasn't our only visit to Cook (Aorangi) or Tekapo as, living in Christchurch made the region accessible and each of the previous and successive visits were memorable,
Before Robert objects to some kind of 'class privilege' I must say that there are stunning parts of this country that are free to visit and only requires petrol money or a bus ticket to visit. We took the opportunity to drive to Queenstown, the passes, to the West Coast, south through the Rakaia Gorge, north to Kaikoura and Marlborough and Nelson - all over for just the cost of petrol and accomodation (some cheap and cheerful and some swanky).

Feel free to write posts on your blogs of your own Perfect Days.