Mt. Cook
The DOC (pronounced “dock” by the locals, short for Department of Conservation) campsite at Mt. Cook is a great place to kick things off if you’re camping the South Island of New Zealand with a car. It’s the perfect distance driving from Christchurch in the late morning, as the extremely helpful officer at the DOC office in Christchurch told me yesterday morning. The drive also takes you past Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki, which aside from having two of the most unintentionally hilarious names ever bestowed on any body of water not named Titicaca are both incredibly gorgeous, with water of a blue so bright it seems unnatural, impossible even.
Before you stop at the site to pitch your tent, you can stop at the Old Mountaineers Cafe near the Hermitage Hotel (which looks nice but well out of my budget) to take in the incredible view of Mt Cook, drink some overpriced espresso and use their moderately priced wifi, as I did. The campsite itself is very nice, though you have to walk 20-30 minutes to actually see Mt Cook. It has bathrooms and dining facilities which are both serviceable of extremely spartan (no lights, no power, need your own camp stove for cooking).
But the best thing about te site, as far as I’m concerned, is that you’ll find lots of people without it being crowded at all. I quickly befriended two French backpackers close to my own age with an offer of beers from my chilly bin (kiwi for “cooler”) and talked with them about their respective travels in NZ. One had been there nearly a year on a working holiday visa and the other closer to 5 months; both were set to head home in the next month, but neither felt that they had spent too much time in NZ, which makes me really wish I could stay more than 6 days.
The 3 of us hiked to take pictures of Mt Cook at dusk, polished off our beers, and then set out to make beans and chicken for dinner. Sadly, after several misadventures involving my new camp stove (the primary problem being that it was upside down… oops) we all decided it was too late and packed it in for the night.
