All four of us are up, packed and ready for the road by 9:30 am – we drive into town and park up close to New Regent Street for some breakfast

Two variations of smashed avocado on toast, eggs benedict with salmon as well as a ham, onion & cheese toastie

We get on the road to start our reasonable drive for the day

First pitstop is into Rakaia – we’ve stopped here before and knew the rents would love it, for the big salmon

We have another small stop into Ashburton for Chemist Warehouse, to share Daisy’s favourite retail brand ever ????

It’s a fair drive to get to the first official stopped planned so we just get on with it so we arrive in about 2:30 pm

Lake Tekapo has the beautiful blue glacial waters in addition to Church of the Good Shepherd

We meander over the Maclaren footbridge to Mackenzies Cafe Bar & Grill for some liquids for the drive and back to the car to have a brief stop at Lake Pukaki Viewpoint

The drive on the 80 to Mount Cook village is filled with stops on the way up getting close and personal with the view of the Southern Alps

In the town, we get to Haka House Aoraki Mt Cook and drop our bags for a quick turnaround to head out to the Hooker Valley car parking to do a smaller version of our tramp that Davesy did last time

It’s about 25 minutes until we get to the view point we were bringing the parents to

Dave then takes David on a brief jog a bit further to over the second swing bridge to get the great view of Mount Cook from this trail

We make our way back to the car and drive over to the Tasman Glacier Car Park where everyone but Joy gets out to get the view

Sadly, the trail we’ve done before is closed, for whatever reason, but we can do a bit of an extended tramp to get round via the Jetty walkway to get the view we are after

The sun is about to set so we dash back to the car and have a brief refresh at the hostel before wandering to the restaurant

Chamois Bar & Grill sorts us a celebratory pint each as well as a dinner feast

Shattered, we walk back to the hostel with a slight view of the milky way and many of the stars – finally!

We have a shower before bed and call it a day