Okay New Zealand baby! Having a great time here so far. Nearly half way round the south Island and today I think is the first day I've not had to get up stupidly early but did anyway just because I'm use to it now. Loving it here makes a great change from Oz, the traveling is fast paced and there's always something to get involved in less alcohol which given the last five months will be a good thing and lets not forget the beautiful scenery.
So started out in Christchurch where I met back up with Julie and we stopped in a hostel called 'Jail House'. Would defo recommend it anybody ever goes it's an old prison they've converted into accommodation so you're bedroom is an old cell, bit spooky but good all the same. Christchurch is a really nice town, very English and what made me happiest was I managed to get my first warm real ale beer!!! Good times. We went up the gondola, did the botanical gardens (wow I've so over done these bloody gardens, but hey they are free...), saw some live entertainment during the world renown busker's festival before getting the good old magic bus onto Kaikora.
Kaikora we stopped at for two nights and is the place to be in New Zealand if you like big fish (well mammals) like Whales and Dolphins and me being the webbed toe water freak I am love big fish (except sharks) and so we went swimming with the dusky dolphins in the pacific. Wow wow wow what an amazing experience, literally there was a pod of about three hundred dolphins. They got a little bored of us after a while so we were told to do things to keep them interested one of which was sing! Jules found that they particularly like the theme tune to Danger Mouse where as I sang a little Kings of Leon (sex is on fire) being the single of the trip so far. I'd like to note here that this was my first time back in the water since the shark incident and I was pretty scared but manned up! Also this trip was at 5:30am which was lucky as they weather turned bad and no one else got to go out, also it's the time when the dolphins are most acrobatic!
From Kaikora we headed north for Nelson, in Nelson we went for a four hour trek around Abel Tasman which is a national park that's made up of rain forest and goes right down to the front of the Tasman sea. While on this walk it got slightly warm and so around lunch we decided it'd be a good idea to go for a little swim to cool off. Now I forgot my swimming shorts and towel and so as the beach so pretty secluded I decided that swimming in my boxers would be fine. And it was, though while swimming kayak groups and others all seem to congregate on this beach and so when I got out sharing Julie's ultra small pink towel I was looking pretty masculine I mean not many blokes could pull off old holey boxers while barley covering ones arse with a small pink towel. Anyway in my rush I forgot my boxers and left them on the beach whoops.
From Nelson we headed for the West Coast which brought us to the delightful town of Greymouth. Wow probably one of the most depressing places I've ever been, I mean this place is worse than Perth! We did however go to the Monteiths brewery which was a waste of time. It costs $25 not a lot I know, over here you get the most ridiculous sized glasses of which they used to let us taste the beer, they didn't even fill them I mean this was less than half a swig and the only saving grace we thought would be the MEGA pint at the end followed by BBQ. Now a MEGA pint in my books should be at least two pints, oh no this was just a normal sized standard English unit of beer in a pub which really should have been out of Shameless the locals consisted of a dwarf and a man with one arm, need I say more.....
Running from Nelson we landed in Franz Josef home of the famous glacier. Here we planned to push the boat out a little and do perhaps one of New Zealand's best trips the helihike to the top of the glacier and then a two hour trek. Even though it's the summer here it doesn't seem to count in Franz Josef which has a climate of it's own and unfortunately the helihike got cancelled for two days running due to adverse weather conditions. We decided to stop an extra night as you can't miss going on the glacier and instead signed up for the full day hike as this trip goes out rain or shine. Sods law the third day the helicopters are able to go again but still the full day tour was amazing and you get loads more time on the ice you just don't go up as far. Still have a look at the pics there ace, tis a weird place from the distance it looks like a fake film set a big block of ice in the middle of jungle, good day out though tiring.
This brings me to now which is Lake Wanaka, Jules is falling 12,000ft out the sky somewhere above me, I gave it a miss as already done the falling out the sky activity in OZ, next is Queenstown and Milford Sound.
Hope you're all enjoying the snow!
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