Seriously, to wake up and still not be able to see this thing was getting to me. It’s the biggest mountain. Can we see it before we leave? I mean, I’m fine with the napping and all, but, that was a long drive. We could have been hanging out with JB.

At breakfast, guess what happened? We saw another kea! In the mountain!??! No.
On the patio. Go figure.

I’m beginning to think people feed these things and they hang out…

We decided to take a hike anyway, since we were only going to see some lakes, and we didn’t think the clouds would mess that up. We went up the Tasman Trail to the Blue Lakes, which instead of the Hypnotiq color we expected, are more gray and dirt, ‘cuz that glacier, it’s ‘a melting, and it’s a little dirty. There was a bunch of melting snow caps, it was pretty.

That hike threw me a bit, there was a glacier, and rocks, and it was straight up, and it started to rain, so I was a little grouchy. There was a town a little north called Twizel that was only built to build a dam, but protested to not be torn down and won, so we figured we should see it (it’s a fighter!). Pretty much a dump. But we got groceries (we’re here two more days!?!?). There was some *cough* excellent *cough* British programming on so we napped and watched that. We woke up very late. It had cleared up. We got all dressed up super warm and ran out. MK doesn’t know this, but it redeemed the stupid mountain for me. Have you ever seen the Milky Way? I didn’t cry, but there were tears in my eyes. We spent forever out there, necks craned. There was a shooting star we both saw, planets, stars, incredible. What an amazing view. It didn’t matter at that point to me if we ever saw Mt. Cook.