Just when I thought it couldn’t get any colder… 0° tonight. It’s 5am again, and we’re off for another sunrise photoshoot.

Rinse repeat with the battery charging – me sitting in the visitor centre waiting for everything to charge, while Anton is off taking photos somewhere. Some instant soups, apples and bananas later, its time for another hike!

Today to see the sunset we didn’t just hike a mountain. Oh no. We went up 2200 steps of Sealy Tarns Track to get a great view of the whole valley. It was tougher then expected. Hiking up a incline is one thing, but going up steps for 1.5 hours is a completely different beast. It reminded me of the tour du mont blanc, where you face steep climbs and challenging terrain, but this felt even more intense in such a short time.

The whole time we were going up – not a single cloud (at all, just clear blue skies; thats not that great for landscape photos). We finally reached the top of this track and we got a gorgeous view of both Mt Cook and the valley with the village.

Just when we thought that walking up was hard, going down was even worse. We could feel our legs shaking by the end of it, but we knew we had to keep going. It was pitch black and all we could see is the step beneath us thanks to our flashlights, and the stars above us. Oh the stars were absolutely amazing. We could clearly see the whole Milky Way every day, as no light pollution at all!

Once that was over, what awaited us was going to be the coldest night of our whole trip.