Road trip last three days

Monday 16th. After breakfast, bacon and eggs, we visit our family for a cupper. They are in Wanaka in their holiday home. We take pictures before we leave and then we are back on the road again.
Goal for today is mount Cook or Aoraki by its Maori name. First we do some shopping, we have some trouble getting money from the ATM. We want to go into a bank, if we can find one, and ask what’s wrong. But we will just go by the flow. Lunch is beside the road, on Lindis pass right at the lookout point ± 965 m high. Good thing the buses are self-contained. There is a toilet and shower on board, as well as cooking and an oven both on gaz , it includes also a fridge with freezing box. We can sleep in a proper bed, there is a wee lounge corner and a lot of cupboards to storage all we need during our trip. Later in the afternoon, we make a stop in Twizel for an ice-cream. There isn’t a real ice-cream shop so we buy a box of Goody Goody Gum Drops ice-cream in the supermarket. Lucky for us there is a bank that is still open, so we go in and ask about the ATM. The lady is very kind and walks with us to the ATM to see what happens. Alas she doesn’t have the answer but advises us to call our bank in Holland. Now is not the right time considering the time difference. We’ll have to wait.
Since we are later than expected, we don’t go straight to Mount Cook but find us a place for the night. We find a beautiful freedom camping at the shore of lake Pukaki, with a view on mount Cook if there were no clouds! The water is so blue, fed by glacier water, it looks like someone has thrown in blue paint. We send a picture to the children to show where we sleep tonight.
We solve the problem with getting money and enjoy the rest of the evening. No shark on the menu today!
On Tuesday we go to Aoraki, it is still not visible from the lake, with one of the buses. We leave the other one behind on the campingsite. It is about 40 k away. We pick up a Belgium hitchhiker, who wants to go to mount Cook as well. When we are there we still can’t see the mountain, it is behind the clouds and the rain and probably will be like this for the whole day. We have a look inside the visitor centre, with is very interesting. They have a couple of beautiful glass stained windows with NZ birds in it. A lot of variety things about mountain climbing, nature, rescues and much more. Since we aren’t going to see the mountain today, we leave. But on the way back we make a detour to Tasman valley to have a view of the Tasman glacier. 333 steps up to get at the top, but the glacier is visible. The glacier however, isn’t as huge as it once was. On the glacier lake are floating a couple of iceberg that broke down from the glacier. They look tiny but on the lake is a boat that is no more than a pinpoint on the lake and very small in compare to the icebergs. Nothing tiny about them actually. The worst job for me is jet to come, go down all the 333 steps again, looking into the depts. The buses are no more than toys from this point of view. But I concentrate on the steps and don’t look to far away, I can always see the pictures afterwards.
We pick up the other bus and move on to our next destination. At first we want to stop at lake Tekapo, but the weather forecast isn’t very good and we want to be closer to home. We only stop in Tekapo for groceries. So we drive an hour extra to a site near Gapes Valley. It is a nice spot, out of the wind, under the trees. But a worksite nearby, hope they don’t start to early.
Alas, at 6 am we wake up by the sound of the workers. It isn’t for long, so we can go back to sleep. We take the scenic route on our way back in. We have a stop at Rakaia gorge. We were here 5 years ago but it looks different this time. The water is higher and not so blue and the path above the gorge where we stood, is overgrown and invisible. We go on and are back home somewhere in the afternoon. End of a really great road trip again. We drove about 2000 km these days. A big thanks to our company and drivers for the wonderful week we have had.