The wind calmed down in the morning. But when we were about to leave, the storm rose again. It wasn't as hard as the day before, but one still should lean the bike quite heavily even on the straights. We rode in rain about a hundred kilometers. Finally in the Lake Wakatipu valley, close to Frankton, the rain stopped. From Frankton we turned into Cromwell direction. From Cromwell we'd then take the Lindis Pass towards north.

The road ran along the Kawarau Gorge. There we saw an old bridge, where someone ripped off people with a rubber cord, and a cash-box. It was called bungee. All the romanticism was far away, when that staff pushed poor people in a row down from the bridge, one in every five minutes. I heard that the genuine and original A.J Hackett is of the worst. One jump costs 100-150 NZ$ depending of the place and the height.

In Cromwell, there had just been a gathering of old cars. We stopped for a while to watch the remaining automobiles, most of them Fords from 1930:s and 1940:s. We took some photos and headed for the Lindis Pass. In the beginning it was mountain road, with lots of plain rock face, but later it turned to a road, that was twisting between green velvet like meadowy hills. At the highest point of the Lindis Pass we climbed on top of one such hill, and enjoyed the view, and some picnic style lunch.

The Mount Cook Village is located in a valley between four over three kilometer high mountain tops. The village itself is 780 meters above the sea level. Close to the village there are two Glaciers. One in Hooker Valley, one in Tasman Valley. After check-in to the Mount Cook YHA, we rode to Tasman Valley. The main gravel road ended to a parking place. However, from the parking place another road went towards the Tasman Glacier. The road was probably a service road for some mountain huts. There was a sign, that said: "Very difficult and rough road. Driving only on your own risk. Not for rental vehicles." For me it meant: "What are you waiting for? Ride, ride!" For a motorbike the road was fairly easy. The stones, however, were quite sharp, so there was a possibility to get a flat tyre. Maybe the biggest risk on that road was a possibility of landslides. That's why there were couple of places where stopping was prohibited. We came to another parking place, and found, that we got farther and farther from the glacier without even seeing a glimpse of it. Also there were more and more strict warning signs for the continuing vehicle track, and I wasn't wearing my enduro boots, so we turned back before something happens.

When we came back to the main parking place of the Tasman Valley, we left the bike there, and went to see small green ponds called the Blue Lakes. We also visited the Tasman Glacier lookout, but all we could see was the terminal lake, and a grey heap of gravel. The ice itself was somewhere deeper. We returned to the parking place, and rode back to the YHA. Then we visited SAUNA! The sauna of the YHA wasn't actually original Finnish style sauna, it was more like Swedish style "bastu". There was only the stove with some stones on top of it, and under the stove there was a kettle of water to give some humidity. In real Finnish sauna you throw water on the stove rocks, and you get hot steam bursts in the air. In this sauna there was no kind of drain, so we couldn't play with water so much in the sauna. Of course we had to throw at least some, and the people that walked pass the glass-doored sauna were obviously wondering what is that hissing sound from the evaporating water.

After the sauna we wrote twenty new year's greeting cards. The year changed very peacefully. The only people having more noise and party were a group of about ten Dutch tourists. We didn't bring any alcohol with us, and they didn't sell any wine in the Mount Cook village. Also all the beer was sold out from the village shop, so we had a sober new year.