Aoraki/Mount Cook. Hooker Valley Track. | New Zealand

Mount Cook National Park

We knew about The Mount Cook/Aoraki long before arrived in South Island. It is famous not only because of its perfect triangle shape, but because it is New Zealands Highest mountain. This is the king of all mountains here with 3,754 meters above the sea level.. So it was a must for us to see his majesty.

Our first surprise was Lake Pukaki and its blue water. I couldn't believe it's naturally that blue, but it is. And as we learned before, old ice is actually blue, then this lake with it's melting iceberg water shouldn't be such a surpise. But you know... it is indeed incredible. To see such a bright blue in nature is always a big Wow for me. I love blue and in nature it's even more beautiful.

It is interesting that out of all 12 largest glaciers that are found in New Zealand 8 of them lie within Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. This is really a land of glaciers.

Also there is a Mount Cook Village, where only 250 people lives. There are no grocery stores and none of the people living there owns a property. It's all owned by government.

Hooker Valley Track

Right entering the Hooker Valley we couldn’t stop looking. The Landscapes are jaw-dropping. The bluish grey Hooker River and sand-yellow meadows, grey cliffs and even white glaciers. I was thinking that people living in Mount Cook village must feeling very blessed for the views they can lay their eyes on every day.

We parked our car at White Horse Hill Campsite and paid 13NZD per person (It's 15NZD now). Not the most budget friendly place, especially if you woud like to stay more than one night. It is also very busy campground, but at least there is a kitchen with running water where you can wash your dishes.

It was already past 2 PM, but it wasn’t a problem, so we had our lunch and rested a bit, before going for a hike.

Hooker Valley Track is very easy, flat and scenic track that goes through Hooker Valley. It crosses several swing bridges and I wasn’t thrilled about them. But the views where so beautiful I was determined to continue. The trail is very well formed and maintained, you don’t even need special hiking shoes for this. There is also a toilet along the way. Although there were many people in the campground the trail wasn't that busy in the middle of the day.

When we finally saw the sharp peak of Mount Cook I was amazed how perfect it was, piercing the clouds.It was actually surprisingly hot day.

The track ends at Hooker Lake.When we reached it we saw the Hooker Glacier. It was magical. We sat there on the rocks for a long time. The Hooker Lake was milky grey and pieces of ice – mini icebergs - where slowly floating around.

There was many people there, so we decided to go closer to the lake on it's right side. There was noone there and we sat there for at least an hour. It is very good spot for a picnic. You can sit on the huge rocks and just relax. It was calm, quite and so beautiful.

We hiked back and admired the beautiful Valley. Turns out there are many times when the river overfloods this area and the track is closed. So it's better to check before coming here.

The next day we woke up, because our car was shaking terribly. Turned out is was strong wind and rain. We couldn’t even get out of the car without getting soaked in seconds.

It was very disappointing, because it meant that we wouldn’t be able to do any other hikes in the area. We didn’t have time to wait for the rain to stop and the forecast promised it’s going to rain in this area whole day.

The only choice was to keep moving.

It was so odd to see how everything was changed. There was a huge mist and the mountain peaks were hidden. At least we saw many rainbows.

#MountCook #HookerValleywalk