The natural advantage of the Mount Cook YHA was the breakfast table, with mountain view. After breakfast, we packed and went for a four hour hike to Hooker Valley. There were two beautiful swing bridges along the course. Also now we could see more clearly the Mount Cook itself. Looking from the village, the top of Mount Cook (3754 m) was just behind another mountain, but from Hooker valley you could see it very well.

The terminal lake of the Hooker Valley glacier was quite big, and the glacier itself a lot whiter than the Tasman Glacier. We sat for a moment along of the lake eating couple of "Moro" chocolate bars and watching an ice floe. On our way back I took my T-shirt off for a moment, and burnt myself in less than fifteen minutes, despite of the sun was partly behind clouds all the time.

From Mount Cook we rode first to Tekapo. Near the Lake Tekapo we visited the Church of the Good Shepherd. It is built of the round rocks collected from the lakeshore. There is no altar painting, instead there is a window with a view over the lake, where snowtopped mountains reflect. This church is a very famous wedding church. The guide told, that there had just been arranged a wedding of a German couple. The church is catholic, but they welcome all christians to their services.

When we came to Fairlie, we found, that the new year seems to be a good time to arrange veteran vehicle happenings. In Fairlie a parade of antique vehicles had just ended. There were only two steam engined tractors left. We stopped for taking photos, and the owners of the tractors told us more about them. They were from 1911 and 1913. They weighed 15 tons, and they could pull a mass of 100 tons. After chatting a while, they told us, that the tractors are so slow, that they won't be going back home that evening. They were moving the tractors to an empty yard nearby for camping there, and gave us a lift on the tractors of about a half of a kilometer. Very unusual and interesting experience. Anything can happen in NZ.

We continued our journey to our next stop, Geraldine. There was a small backpackers lodge with only three guest rooms. There was a sign "No Vacancy" in front of it. However, we were the only customers, since the other rooms were occupied by the owner's relatives who were visiting for celebrating the new year. This place was a combined backpackers lodge, and a car electric garage. We got the bike inside the garage. In the evening we tried to find some food from Geraldine. We found a restaurant that sold Chinese takeaways. We bought satayburgers (I thought that satays are Indonesian and burgers American...), and went asleep immediately after Elina lotioned my sunburnt back and shoulders.