My favourite place on Earth came with a leaky tent

If you ask me, New Zealand is the most beautiful country in the world, and Aoraki / Mount Cook is the most beautiful place in it. Snowy peaks and glaciers all around, a river rushing with ice-cold glacier water, swing bridges, and a campsite right at the bottom of it all.

How I ended up sleeping in a $50 tent

If you don’t have a driver’s licence, or just don’t feel like driving on the left, a hop-on hop-off bus is a great way to see New Zealand. You travel with other backpackers, someone else plans the stops, and you get to places that are hard to reach without a car. I travelled with a Stray bus pass that I bought before the trip, which follows a set route around the country.

At Mount Cook the bus stops for two nights so everyone has time to explore, and Stray offers a stay at a hostel in the area. For my budget two nights there was too much, so a friend I met on the bus and I decided to camp the first night and stay at the hostel only for the second. It was a fantastic idea, mainly because the campsite, White Horse Hill Campground, is right at the start of the two trails everyone comes here for.

My tent was bright green, small, cute, and fit me and my backpack perfectly. I had bought it for $50 a week earlier, when I realised I had pretty much no money left for New Zealand, and decided to swap some hostel nights for nights in this tent.

The Hooker Valley Track

From the very first steps the view is huge. Everything around you is green, snowy mountains tower over one side of the valley, and at the end of the valley the peak of Aoraki keeps peeking through the clouds. Below the swing bridges the river is so powerful you can hear it roaring long before you reach it, grey-blue and rushing straight down from the glaciers.

My friend and I walked the Hooker Valley Track together. It’s not a hard walk at all. It’s almost flat, about 10 km there and back, and the path is very straightforward.

There aren’t many places to rest along the way. I remember one stone picnic bench that a few strangers ended up sharing. The walk ends at Hooker Lake, a pale grey lake with broken-off chunks of glacier floating in it. This is the spot: lay out a blanket, eat your packed lunch, stare at the mountain for a while, and then walk back the same way.

We had light rain a few times while we walked, so bring a foldable rain jacket. The weather in New Zealand changes fast. It can be sunny in the morning, raining at noon and sunny again before dark.

My friend also did the second trail, Sealy Tarns, the one people call the Stairway to Heaven. Me? I’m lazy, and I had a hostel to get to.

Then night came, and so did the rain

Back at the campsite, my cute green tent turned out to have one small problem: it wasn’t waterproof. And of course, that night it rained non-stop. (Learn from me and get a tent that actually keeps the rain out.)

Luckily, I had borrowed my brother’s top-quality sleeping bag, which was, in fact, waterproof. I took all my tech stuff inside with me, zipped it almost all the way up with a small gap for air, and spent the night spooning my camera and chargers. Meanwhile my notebook and the book I was reading soaked up every drop that came through the tent’s stitches.

About that kitchen: it’s not really a kitchen. It’s a covered space where people set up their own camping stoves. I didn’t have one, and I honestly don’t remember what we ate, but we went to sleep full.

The morning after

All of it was worth it for what we saw first thing in the morning: a double rainbow over the campsite, right against the mountain.

Those are the moments I will never forget. Would I camp there again? In a heartbeat, but with a better tent this time.