Had a fab nights sleep and woke up around 9am feeling full of cold but toasty and warm. We decide we will travel to Aoraki/ Mt Cook today. It is the highest mountain in New Zealand and really popular with mountain climbers. We will be travelling from the east coast of the south island inland towards the west coast for about 200km.

Our journey takes us through and over the Southern Alps and we stop for a cappuccino in the ski resort of Fairlie around midday. It’s getting steadily cooler but the sun is shining brightly and it actually feels warm out of the shade. The photo opportunities are numerous and as we get nearer to Mt Cook it just gets more and more stunning. We’re all snow virgins and having never been skiing before the spectacular mountain range just looks unbelievable. The frosty pine trees, craggy snow mountains and wide flat boulder plains combine to make a wondrous and magical picture postcard image. It’s like a beautiful fairy land.

Around 3pm we stop in the town of Twizel (How cute is that!) and share antipasto. Yum! Then back in the car for another hour to Mt. Cook. When we arrive it’s almost dark and we have watched the temperature on the car drop from 2 to minus 8.5 in the space of 20 minutes. The YHA hostel is gorgeous, a Swedish style cabin with log burners, a lovely big kitchen and a sauna. Luckily the fires are blazing and the whole place is really snug. We make our nightly usual, mulled red wine and put some jacket potatoes in the oven for later.

Its 11pm now and we’ve just come to bed, we spent the evening watching my favourite film ever �Point break. I suppose it must be at least 15 years old now but I still love it and I must have seen it a hundred times. Ali told me it’s really cheesy but I don’t care! Tomorrow we’re going mountain biking- god help me.