As we waved goodbye to Queenstown the weather took a turn for the worst and we arrived in a rather overcast Dunedin, the Edinburgh of the South! We still managed to explore the city however including the Cadbury's factory and a couple of cathedrals! That evening we took advantage of the cheap fish and decided to cook a fish pie, having an early night to recover from Queenstown!!... read more

Todays journey was especially long as we made our way down to the party and adrenalin capital, Queenstown! We stopped at Lake Mattheson where we saw the beautiful mirror images of Mount Cook in the lakes, and then onto Wanaka, which was again really beautiful with the alps in the background behind the massive lake. Next stop was the famous and orginal bungy just outside Queenstown where Camilla and Elin had a rock, paper scissors battle to win a free pub crawl! Camilla won and we all started to get very excited about the evenings activities thanks to Elins outstanding announcement on the bus microphopne to get the whole bus taking part in the crawl round Queenstown bars! The crawl was a success if a little dramatic at the end with Camilla having to give first ... read more

The journey down to Greymouth was broken up by some pretty good stops! First was Cape Foulwind, home to a seal colony which was very exciting! The seals were flapping around the rocks and diving into the sea and so after many photos we made our way back down the track only to be greeted by a massive male seal who also thought it would be a good idea to use the track!! Elin was ever so slightly petrified of the huge thing as it kept lunging forward but after some negotiation we managed to safely pass it amazed at having got so close! Next stop were the Pancake Rocks, which stacked like pancakes, rose out from the sea creating blowholes! We walked round and took yet more pictures of the amazing scenery before heading back ... read more

Today we headed down to the capital, Wellington! Aboard our new bus with a different driver Joe we passed the journey time with an epic game of bus-bowling down the aisle of the bus which with $62 at stake was very competitive! Unfortunatle Elin scored 0, Camilla 2, and Becky 4 which was not enough to beat the full strike and so the 462 was taken from our sights!! Arriving in Wellington we decided not to be disheartened and instead visited the fanous Te Papa Museum before heading to the supermarket where we treated ourselves to some pick and mix! We may have sampled one sweet each as walked through the store, unfortunately however this little naughty was observed by a local busy-body shopper who followed us through the store and accused us of stealing! At ... read more

Today was the day which Becky had been waiting for and which Camilla had been dreading!! The 19.4km Trans-Alpine crossing! Not wanting to waste a moment we boarded the bus at 6am and got off to begin the 2 hour hike across the 'flat' and up the evil Devil's Staircase to the South Crater! This is where we had the option to climb up the famous Volcano 'Mount Doom' from Lord of the Rings which having nearly died on the staircase was not even considered by Camilla! Elin and Becky on the other hand decided to take on the challenge/death trap, Becky drugged up on Ibruprofen and began the supposedly 3 hour climb whilst Camilla wrapped up like an eskimo sat and waited at the bottom! An hour later one of the other girls attempting the ... read more