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Today has already been a long day and I've not even finished yet. Some stupid idiot (guess who) had the great idea of getting up early enough to catch the sunrise over Mount Cook from the Red Tarns, which is around an hour's walk from the hostel. It was bloody cold when I got up and cleverly dropped my camera at 5:50am for all my dorm to hear. I trudged up the hill in darkness with the stars still out, then finally arrived at the first viewpoint. That's when I heard the quiet rustling in the bushes behind me. I nearly crapped myself when three kea hurried out to the lookout to investigate me. It was cool! I struggled to get my camera working for a good shot of them, but I did. Eventually I must have seen about seven kea on the rest of the short walk to the Red Tarns to get a beautiful view of the valley and the mountains as the sun rose to slowly bathe them in a beautiful golden light. Worth the effort? Absolutely!
The next part of the day was a nice walk in the sun through the Hooker Valley to the lake at the foot of the glacier there. The glacier is fed from the slopes of Mount Cook and the lake has icebergs. Very nice. I somehow managed to get across an icy river to get closer to the terminal face, but then got a bit stuck trying to find a safer way back!
The Cook Connection bus then brought me to Lake Tekapo, home of a beautiful lake and some of the clearest night skies in the southern hemisphere. This is where I booked a stargazing session at the top of Mount John, which has research telescopes and smaller telescopes and also a resident professional astrophotographer who arranged my SLR to get some great shots of the amazing clear night sky. We then saw Saturn by telescope as well as loads of star clusters, constellations and nebulae. No white light is allowed on the mountain and my eyes adjusted to show the stars in all their glory. Pretty unforgettable.
I finished the night off by drinking my coffee and lying on the lawn of the YHA looking upwards and trying to remember what I'd seen. After waking up at 5:30am, going to bed at 2am made this one of the longest days in my travels so far...
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