LET'S GET LOOPIER ...

The approach to Mount Cook is breathtaking. To paint the picture across Lake Pukaki where Aoraki 'The Cloud Piercer' and the Southern Alps are silhouetted on the horizon, you would only need the palest blues, the softest greys and a few dabs of white for the snowcaps in your paintbox. Mount Cook village is a tiny settlement of mostly tourist accommodation of varying degrees of luxury ranging from our own cosy woodcabin hostel to the splendour of The Hermitage Hotel overlooking the village. The hotel is the hub of village activity as it's the only one there! This is the third Hermitage to be built at Mount Cook, the others having been washed away and burnt down but presumably they did their homework and installed a sprinkler system this time round.

The weather was just perfect for the four days that we spent there so after lunch on day one it was boots on and we headed up the valley towards Aoraki and Mount Sefton to the start of the Sealy Tarns walk which promised spectacular views into the valley and around. The walk started with a pleasant stroll up a gently sloping path then after an hour we got to the signpost for our walk which directed us off the beaten track - to nowhere it seemed, until we looked up and saw orange markers rising sharply over what looked like a stream of huge boulders tumbling down the side of the bush covered valley. Nothing for it, so onwards and upwards we went, clambering and scrambling with upward glances to see the top getting closer by the minute. After about an hour a real killjoy coming down to meet us burst the bubble when he said that it was a false horizon and that we weren't even halfway there yet and he'd turned back as he'd had enough! Sure enough he was right and it took another hour and half to reach the top, my legs and lungs screaming by now and how glad (and surprised) was I to see that some considerate soul had placed a bench at the top. The views were superb - snowcapped Mount Sefton across a valley to our left, Sealy Tarns glacial lakes shining like jewels in the sun and the Hooker Valley snaking along below us. The only sounds to break the silence were the distant rumbles of snowfalls as they broke away from high slopes and thundered down mountains far behind us. The only thing that slightly marred the otherwise perfect view was the long grey shabby-looking spit extending back up the valley from the tarns. We found out later next day that was the magnificent Muller Glacier - oops!

Our walk the next day took us all the way up the Hooker Valley to the lake at the foot of the Hooker Glacier. Icebergs floated in the water as we watched three young backpackers stripped down to their Mickey Mouse boxers standing at the water's edge egging each other on into the ice bath. There was a lot of giggling, shoving and false starts before the pact kicked in and they waded in together to their waists, gasping for breath before a quick dunk over the shoulders and out again like shots. It was a beautiful walk through the last of summer alpine flower meadows and across swing bridges in lovely warm sunshine, Aoraki looming above us all the way. A howling gale at the summit whipped snow off the peak which looked just like smoke pouring out of a great big hole at the top.

It had been clear blue skies throughout our time in Mount Cook but on the last morning as we left the sky was dotted and streaked with the most amazing array of clouds of different shapes, textures and colours. A huge cone-shaped cloud above Aoraki looked just as if it was wearing a wizard's hat - maybe it had been smoke after all ...

Wanaka is Queenstown's less commercialised little brother. Quite why they changed the town's name in 1940 from the perfectly good name Pembroke, I don't know. We did another one of our mystery marathon tramps around Wanaka. The fact that there was no scale on the map we had paid good money for should have served as a warning, but the walk we estimated as being a 7 km, 3 hour round trip, linking a hike up Iron Mountain with panoramic views of Lakes Wanaka and Hawea and Mount Aspiring National Park turned out to be twice as long and we were almost fed up with the sound of gravel crunching underfoot by the end. But it was another wonderful walk - we sat on the banks of a wide blue river in the middle of forest, watching salmon rising before us and I imagined that being in the Canadian Rockies would be just like this. We made it back to town just in time for doors open at the cinema. This time there was a wider selection of seats - we could have sat in bog standard big theatre seats, a couple of rows of old fashioned train seats, some aeroplane seats, four rows of sofas or in a bright yellow Morris Minor parked by the side of the screen! We took the comfy sofa option with cushions which came in very handy for the scary bits in the film. During the intermission we joined the impatient queue for white chocolate and ginger cookies, as big as saucers, fresh from the oven.

Lake Wanaka was the location of our first foray in a two-man kayak which was great fun once I'd mastered the highly technical job of steering the thing. We spent an hour zig-zagging our way across the lake, singing the Hawaii Five-0 theme tune, during which a Catalina sea-plane swooped in right above us, touched down and took off again immediately, circling round for another go. It did this about a dozen times and by the end we were exchanging waves and smiles with the guy in the back seat!

Marc spent a day canyoning at Wanaka. He was picked up from the hostel after a gargantuan breakfast and spent the day abseiling and flinging himself off high rocky ledges and sliding head-first down rocky chutes into into small deep pools. Apparently this was a 'world class gorge' and that evening I had to wait ages until he'd stopped talking about it to tell him about the 'world class shoe browsing' day I'd enjoyed in his absence.