New Zealand | Day 2 | Christchurch to Mt. Cook | Sunday, Jan 30th 2011

Of course, since we went to bed early, we woke up at 6:30am ready to rock.  After packing up, we loaded our gear back in the car and set out for breakfast, which was amazing (you may be starting to see a recurring theme here).  We decided to check out the Canterbury Museum before leaving town because we had just missed it yesterday, and it looked like there were good exhibits.  As it turns out, we found an exhibition on the first Antarctic expeditions taking place from 1904-1916, with original artifacts and photography that has only been on display a few times in the last century.  Apparently it was on loan from the British Royal collections, and it was an incredibly rare opportunity, for which we gladly paid 30 NZD (about 23 USD). After that it was about 10:30, and time to hit the road.  We set off for the mountains and I continued to develop my other-side-of-the-road driving skills.  Now I'm to the point where I'm only iffy when making turns - it's very counterintuitive and takes a lot of getting used to.

As we continued to make progress towards Lake Tekapo, the overcast weather appeared to be breaking up.  We had lunch at the Mt. John Observatory, which is perched high above the shores of Lake Tekapo, which due to limestone in the water has an other-worldly, chalky blue color.  It was amazing even in the poor light conditions, and we agreed to go back and check it out later if the weather improves tomorrow. After a photo-op we began the final leg of our journey to Mt. Cook.  Unfortunately, the weather continued to deteriorate as we approached, and by the time we got there it was quite blustery and raining steadily.  The clouds allowed us to see just enough to be upset that it we couldn't see everything, so we are crossing our fingers for better weather tomorrow.  To pass the rest of the afternoon we checked out the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre, and hung out for a few hours at the Old Mountaineers Cafe and had dinner. The inclement weather also provided an opportunity to watch the NZ version of a Lifetime movie on one of the two TV channels in our room, so things are really looking up ;)  Hopefully we'll have better news to report tomorrow.