Mount Cook Flyover – Best Ending Ever
T.S.Eliot famously wrote that the world would end not with a bang, but with a whimper. Obviously he had never been on an Adventures Abroad tour which always aspires to end with a bang and this New Zealand tour is no exception. On this final post from the March 2025 tour, our group is going to hop in a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan and spend an hour or more flying to and over New Zealand’s highest peak, Mount Cook or Aoraki in the Maori language. It will be one hell of a way to end what has been an epic journey through this amazing country. We have saved you a seat so please join us.
In the last post we headed north from Dunedin to visit the Moeraki Boulders and other attractions along the South Island’s east coast after which we turned inland and headed for New Zealand’s most famous hotel, The Hermitage, which sits in the shadow of Mount Cook.
We have now returned to the northern section of Te Wahipounamu UNESCO World Heritage Site which we previously visited in our trip to Doubtful Sound in Fiordland National Park. Now we are in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park which has 23 peaks over 10,000 feet (about 3,000 metres) including New Zealand’s highest mountain which tops out at 12,218 feet (3,724 metres). As I’ve mentioned before, New Zealand has come to terms with the debate as to whether to call certain places by their Indigenous name or their European moniker. The answer is simple – use them both. Aoraki translates as ‘Cloud Piercer’ in Maori and Mount Cook is obvious from the European perspective. I wish we could do this in North America.
Not only does the park have the highest mountains in Australasia, it has 72 glaciers that cover 40% of the entire park. While the park is a paradise for hikers, the only realistic way to experience some of those 23 peaks and 72 glaciers is to see them from above and that’s exactly what we are about to do.
The small airfield is located at Lake Tekapo and on our way there we stop to visit this monument erected by local farmers to the celebrated border collies that made sheep farming possible in this inhospitable environment. It’s a nice tribute to man’s best friend.
So here we are at the headquarters of Air Safaris and as you can see, it’s a blue sky day – perfect flying conditions. In previous posts, I have been singing the praises of our South Island guide and driver Ian Hodgkinson and once again he has come through for us. Our original itinerary had us making this flight on different day, but when Ian checked the weather and saw that it would be socked in on that day, he arranged for the flight to be rescheduled and here we are.
This is the the Cessna 208B we will be flying in to make what is referred to as ‘The Grand Traverse’ of Mount Cook. Every seat has an unobstructed view.
Our pilot is a young man who exudes an air of competence and we have Ian as our co-pilot. Let’s take off.
The take off is very smooth and for those who might have some trepidation of flying in these smaller planers – don’t. They are a joy to fly in and provide a completely different experience than a commercial jet.
The next hour was simply pure magic. Starting from the views of Lake Tekapo and then the braided rivers coming down from the glaciers, to the glaciers themselves and then the circling of Mount Cook, it was 60 minutes I will never forget. Here is a gallery of photos from that trip. Double click to open one and then double click again to enlarge.
This is the view that greeted me in the morning at The Hermitage.
It was truly sad that this wonderful trip was coming to an end. As it turns out it was on St. Patrick’s Day that Alison and I said goodbye to our tour leader and great friend Chris Tripodi and as I mentioned before, despite his resemblance to the late, great Christopher Lee, he is not a vampire.
Chris and most of the others on this tour are headed to Australia, while Alison and I will be flying back to the North Island to explore the Art Deco city of Napier and then the Coromandel Peninsula. Those posts will be coming up shortly.
For AA fans we will be travelling to Morocco in the fall, then our first trip with veteran guide Jonathan Hodgson, to Sri Lanka and The Maldives in January. Later we will visit the cities of Budapest, Vienna and Prague followed by that long delayed trip to China. So there’s a lot more to look forward to over the next year or so. I hope you’ll join us.