On my way up the West Coast decided to stop in Fox Glacier for a day. It's a natural but it sounds great! Fox Glacier the village is a tiny place, it's basically just one short street with a lot of confused looking hikers wandering about. To get on the glacier itself you'd have to pay at least $100, so we decided to just do a gentle walk to the look-out point to admire from a distance. Ended up being through a jungle, and miles down a road, but it was still nice. Once we got to the look-out, and admired [View Full Entry]

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As the title says, I won't be coming to Queenstown again! Well, I probably will at some time within my lifetime, but I can't see it being on this trip. I'm aiming to leave the South Island now, and make my way up to the North Island for the summer. Woohoo, Christmas on the beach! Decided I had to get round to doing at least one of the activities things here, so we decided to do the Nevis Arc. It's like a massive swing that drops you about 200m before you swing over the river towards the cliffs opposite. That was [View Full Entry]

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Stuart Island in the morning, then would be going back to Queenstown in the evening. Apparently, Stuart Island only has 28km of roads (handy fact in case it ever comes up on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire). So we walked a bit, had some chips, walked some more, avoided the rain, then went on a glass-bottomed boat to see the fishes. The water is stupidly clear, so that was fun. Would have been nice to stay for longer to be able to do some of the farther walks. Then back on the bus for hours and hours to get back [View Full Entry]

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Back on the Stray bus for the second day of our intrepid adventure. Going on to Invercargill, then catching the ferry to Stuart Island to spend the night. I had previously been told by an Invercargill resident that the place was a dump, so really not expecting much. But it was surprisingly nice. I don't know what I'd think if I spent more than a couple of hours there, but I have nothing to complain about. Went to the museum, saw the Tuatoras - the oldest animals in the world (I think). Very exiting. Also saw the car-motorbike thing that was [View Full Entry]

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Day one of the Stray Adventure! Getting on the bus with a load of people who had already been on the bus together for ages was the tiniest bit strange. There's all these bus games about Spaceships and tractors or something? I have no idea if every Stray bus does them or if ours was just weird. On the way to Milford Sound to begin with, though stopped in Te Anau for an extremely delicious veggie pie. Mmmm. Then on a phote stop we ran into a Korean filming crew, making a documentary about the mammoths in the ice age (I [View Full Entry]

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Back in Queenstown - again. Will be joining up with Stray I think, just to go down to the bottom of the South Island. Think I'm going to see Milford Sound tomorrow, which should be awesome as I've heard so much about how beautiful it is. I ran into Melissa and Lindsey, two girls that I met here back in May, this is seriously a small place. I also ran into a guy that I shared a dorm with back in Christchurch, though I have no memory of him at all! Strange. Today's a nice lazy day, that I'm going to [View Full Entry]

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Back on the road again! Got my backpack packed, and back to living in dorms. Went to Dunedin, nice place. First hostel had creepy guys in the dorms, so switched to another one that had a cat! I love hostels that have nice cats (not like the hostel in Wanaka that had a nasty demon cat). We spent the day walking round the Botanic Gardens then hauling ourselves up Baldwin Street. The morning before I went to Queenstown on the bus I went on a tour of Speights Brewery, I now feel I know everything about beer. Nice beer though! But [View Full Entry]

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Need to work (until I win the lottery), and my first job offer fell through so decided to go to Christchurch. Registered with temp agencies, but not much work about :(. Did however get one job for a while in a health board call centre, despite not knowing anything at all about illness or medicine. Weird. By now though, I think I know absolutely everything there is to know about the piggysniffles. Didn't do much else while in Christchurch, trying not to spend any money! [View Full Entry]

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Went to Wanaka, nice little place. Walked up another hill (so many hills), again, lovely views. Got woken up in the middle of the night by a fire alarmin the hostel, so annoying. It was raining and and cold and there wasn't even a fire. Which is good, obviously, but if I have to get turfed out of bed I'd prefer some excitement. [View Full Entry]

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Queenstown awesome, though frickin cold. Walked up Queenstown Hill, perfect timing as the day after it started snowing down in the town. Went on a jetboat in Skippers Canyon, yay! Seriously, I should update this more often, I barely remember what I did that long ago. [View Full Entry]

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