Tekapo - Mt. Cook - Christchurch

After Oamaru I wanted to head up to Mt. Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand at 3700 meters. It was a tricky hitch as the road leading from the coast is not exactly busy. While standing at the intersection a fellow hitcher pulls up and is also heading towards Mt. Cook. We join forces and start to hitch together. Minutes later a lorry pulls up and Matt and myself jump in.

During the ride we get to know each other, similar age, similar background and I am telling him about my hitch with an English punk from Taupo to Wellington. Matt says, "Peter the Punk, with a blue Mohawk?". Yep, turns out we both knew the same guy from completely different places.

5 hours later we are still quite a distance from Mt. Cook, but it is getting dark and it is f**king freezing. We are thinking of giving up for the night when a friendly old chap in a truck (From now on I name Matt "Lorry Whisperer" because of his uncanny knack at getting rides in trucks.) stops and says he is not going to Mt. Cook, but he can drop us off at Lake Tekapo, which was also on our list of places we wanted to see. So we hop in and drive through the darkness to Lake Tekapo. We stay in the local YHA where the receptionist is a snotty homosexual who frowns on us when we ask if there is a TV and only hands us one key to the room. A couple of beers later and the world is in order again.

The next day we hitch to Mt. Cook and this time make it before lunch. Mt. Cook is stunning, amazing, beautiful, yes the whole plethora of superlatives again. It looks like what a child would draw when told to paint a mountain - triangular with the top bit covered in fresh snow. I go for a long walk up to Hooker lake but got excited too early as I found out it was named after the discoverer and not the plenitude of prostitutes.

After Mt. Cook it was off to Christchurch, a quintessentially English town, replete with rivers to punt on, botanical gardens, private boys schools and lots of chaps playing rugby. Did sweet FA and enjoyed myself immensely. I broke my record hitching to Christchurch. 4 drivers each one with a different nationality - Singapore, Germany, New Zealand and Samoa. The Samoan was actually the minister of the church in Tekapo which is one of New Zealand's most photographed icons. He said that the Japanese come in thousands to get married there, but if I wanted to I could give him a call and he would fit me anytime I wanted.