The night at the Aoraki Mount Cook campsite turned out to be the first really bad weather we've come across. Gale force winds funneled down the valley by the mountains combined with rain to give us a rough night to say the least! I was woken up at 2am by water dripping inside my tent and had to prompty cover everything with my raincoat. The tents have two layers, but the wind was so strong that it pushed the two sheets of fabric together, letting the rain seep through. Coupled with the increasing dampness was the flexibility of the tents themselves. While they're very sturdy and well built, there's no way they can stand up to winds that strong and even when roped down, they flexed about and were practically crushed down on top of us by the wind. One couple went inside to sleep and found their tent in a tree the following morning! It was certainly 'an experience' to say the least, and our tired faces on Saturday showed how little sleep we'd all gotten.
The gales were still blowing too strong for Lisa to safely drive the bus, so we hung out in the kitchen and lounge at the campsite, waiting for the wind to die down. When it did so and the sun came out, I went for a walk down to the lake and got some great photos of Aoraki Mount Cook, before joining everyone else back at the camp to head off at around 11am. We drove to Aoraki Mount Cook village and its information centre (where I had the tastiest muffin of my trip yet!), before continuing to the town of Oamaru.
Back on the East Coast, we had a walk around Oamaru for an hour, before heading to camp, where I propmtly got a room to ensure that I didn't have to sleep anywhere that had moving walls!
Now that I've mentioned Oamaru, I think it's time to give some observations on the South Island's small towns. First of all, it's almost impossible to get run over by a car, due to the lack of traffic and the courtesy of the drivers. You're equally unlikely to find a shop open when you want it to be, even if it's Saturday afternoon or lunchtime during the week (I don't know what sort of opening hours system they operate, but it's certainly an odd one). What we know as newsagents or cornershops are called dairies here. Such shops only stock one paper, usually a local one with two pages of international news, so you're preactically cut off from the goings on of the world. Such towns are always famous for something, as you've already found out and will do later on.
