hey guys i just want to acknowledge the fact that uh we've reached 300
plus subscribers on this account i have been uploading videos more than two years
every week uh without missing a single week so i just want to say thank you guys for supporting the
channel by subscribing and liking the videos right now it's november 24th so it's just a
bit over two years since ling and i arrived in new zealand and that duck is flapping his wings
like crazy it's been two years since ling and i first set foot in new zealand so this is gonna be
an exciting new chapter for us that we've been granted an extension on her stay at this time
ling and i should have been back in canada and the future of the vlog was kind of just hanging in the
balance i probably would have just stopped making videos and that would have been that
very fortunate very fortunate that we're still here and that there's more to come so stay tuned
so we are here at the poeca national resort what we are here at the powaka reserve this
is a freedom campsite we are still in the season of covid so as you can see you have this massive
field free campsite with only four campers including ourselves we left uh lake takapo
yesterday and had a beautiful drive 45 minutes down to this reserve over here and today we're
gonna drive 45 minutes north along lake pukaki i know what it sounds like it's pukaki with a
p we're gonna make our way up uh to a mountain called uh mount cook you may have heard of it
it's a pretty popular instagram photo a lot of people like to sit in the middle
of the road you know because that's what you do when you're driving down a highway
and or do jump shots and we're probably gonna do the same so who am i gonna
aoraki slash mount cook standing at 12 218 feet tall which would make this mountain the highest
mountain in the entire country of new zealand sir edmund hillary who is a native of new zealand
uh would practice and fine-tune his mountaineering skills on mount cook
alrighty the mountain that we're gonna see today so we're gonna get a move on i think
foreign we're here at peter's lookout overlooking lake pukaki there's a p not a b
peter's lookout offers one of the best vantage points to aoraki mount cook let me show you the
viewers so on a clear day that's what it should look like as you can see it is not a clear day and
when you have the largest mountain in new zealand you need a very clear day just to see the peak
um i'm trying to figure out where is mount cook because there's so many
mountain peaks surrounding that are massive and and beautiful and snow-capped that we
don't really know but things are looking better it's a lot better than when we were
at reflections lake when we went to visit the fox glacier and we couldn't see anything
i think we have a pretty good chance of seeing him if we could figure out which one is he we
thought maybe it was this mountain but that road kind of snakes to the right so maybe once
we make that right we'll be able to see him i can't believe that we're still in new zealand
and you believe this place that's one of the great things about new zealand there's
so much diversity to the landscape the deserts of bannock burn to canterbury plains to aoraki
and it's all within relatively close proximity something that new zealand has that no other
country has the rockies in canada might be bigger and more grandiose but canada is a
massive country so if i'm on the east coast i can't drive three hours to get this versus
the south island you can do the entire island within a couple of weeks and see
everything so we're still not clear which mountain is mount cook so we're gonna head into the sir
edmund hillary alpine center where lin can use the toilet because they have flushing toilets
and learn a bit more about the surrounding mountain you plan on what
about 10 23 uh still fasting haven't eaten anything
so we're gonna check out the calf maybe they got something good look at that
look at all of this wow and there's the man sir edmund hillary beekeeper turned first
how do i phrase this sir edmund hillary who's the first kiwi was with tenzing norgate they
summited together uh mount everest you sure it wasn't they submitted new zealand
there he is sir edmund hillary i wouldn't be surprised if this was a tis scale replica because
he was a tall man with rather long legs very distinguished looking fella i think he's looking
at me that could be a clue he might be veering his gaze on mount cook it's the scale yeah this this
confirms it uh that that statue of ed hillary is to scale take give or take three meters three feet
he's still pretty tall six foot two six foot two is how tall the late sir edmund hillary was
i think it's very symbolic that uh the statue of ed hillary looking at
uh mount cook kind of symbolizes his life when he would stay here at the hermitage hotel
hermitage i don't know if i'm pronouncing that correctly and he would look over at the mountains
and dream about climbing that mountain which he did in 1948 and 1949. the feet as it's
forever immortalized here his ascent of successful ascent with sherpa tenzing norgay
of mount everest on the 29th of may 1953 that's 29 035 feet that's more than double mount cook
we have the famous pork bellied apple sauce pie with the crackling remember
from fairly i'm gonna cop that which one has the biggest piece
i'll grab this one so we've got our fairly pork belly with crackling pies and of course the
great late great sir edmund hillary behind us and of course we can't forget the view
the peak of mount cook which we now have confirmed is in fact that mountain right there
you're beeping wing that means get your cafe
barely i thought i wouldn't be able to get you one last time but luckily the hermitage hotel provides
fairly with the two dollar markup but that's all good i guess the turnover isn't isn't as
obvious worth the nine dollars
i see it's really hard
let's see if the gopro picks up the audio of living chewing
my teeth hurt
i'm deaf in one year now i'm just seeing now in my face that i spent about four hours in the sun
yesterday at the techa post springs and foolish of me i forgot to put some sunblock on my face
so i don't know if you can see it on the film but my nose is a different shade from the area
surrounding my eyes new zealand sun not to be effed around with
so how awesome is it that the hermitage hotel gives you 10 gigs of free wi-fi
a day for free when you're off the grid and camping in a backpack that's a pretty big
deal so when looking into accommodation here in aoraki mount cook village we looked at the
hermitage actually ling looked at the hermitage was a bit out of our price range how much was
it per night for sweet i think it was 400 yeah that's definitely out of our price range
if you want to stretch that money further staying at a doc campsite we could probably stay somewhere
for a month with that money at least like a decent holiday park with running water in a kitchen
we're here at the aoraki malcook national park visitor center just to get some information on
some of the hikes nearby and then i are thinking about doing the hooker valley track which is a
hooker it's a track so the hooker valley track leads you to hooker lake and the hooker valley
track is just north of lake pukaki i'm not making any of those names up you can look it up i swear
there is a hooker valley track north of lake pukaki as i mentioned we're going up the hooker
valley track which leads into the hooker lake and then turns into a hooker glacier
there's a butt load of information at the ice site kind of like a little mini museum
so we don't have time to look at everything because we have a
scheduled screening back at the hermitage hotel so we got to we're going to watch a movie in 3d
oh it's warm today hello again sir edmund hillary we're back what's the movie we're watching i
don't know you wanted to watch it it's like a 3d movie we're here for the movie mount cook magic
nice left right voyage to visit the earth mother papatuanuku they're on the walker
the guy didn't actually fall down the crevasse see look he's okay
that's it that was exhilarating they almost had a heart attack when that climber fell
in the crevasse grabbed my arm like there was no tomorrow squeeze the life out of my heart