The best thing to do is ask Irene about the delightful Polynesian Spa she visited and watch the look of disgust and slightly green tinge that comes across her face! As "relaxing evenings" go, this definitely wasn't. First of all do not underestimate the smell of sulphur i.e. rotten eggs that comes off the thermal baths and therefore fills the whole spa area. It is hard to convince yourself that immersing your whole body in foul smelling water is the best thing for it. That aside it is also hard to jump into tiny pools filled with Asian tourists who are [View Full Entry]

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Being extremely cultural we decided to go to a Mauri concert and hangi meal. We were greeted by Larry our driver and then brought to their village just outside the town , we saw men perform the haka, which was excellent, then saw various demonstrations of games Mauri children are taught and battle moves they learn later. The concert turned out to be excellent, one of the funniest and most entertaining things we have seen! The hangi meal is where all the food, meal, vegetables, steame [View Full Entry]

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Windy city? [View Full Entry]

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Christchurch isn't giving the best of impressions to us. [View Full Entry]

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Stayed in a caravan park that was not to our usual standard! [View Full Entry]

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We hiked two hours to our accomodation on a boat, you take this lovely path through the forest with occasional glimpses of the beach! It was quite an adventure leaving the house for a night and carrying our stuff through a forest to stay on a boat. Had a great laugh with everyone - had dinner and drinks on deck and then the skipper brought us to this cave with glow worms, which is so amazing it really has to be seen. It's like being in a wonderland of fairy lights. The whole idea was completely spoilt though when a torch [View Full Entry]

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Managed to somehow turn off my alarm the one mornng I really needed it. However, was obviously on alert for the glacier and made it up in loads of time. Afer we got suited up with our books, spikes, coat, gloves etc we got the bus to the bottom of Franz Joesf. It takes about 40 minutes walking to get to the exact bottom of the glacier, crossing by all these signs saying go no further, danger and other reassuring warnings!! A river runs under the glacier, it burst through due to really heavy rainfall in 98/99 but generally just rushes [View Full Entry]

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Our heliride got upgraded to a twin ride to the Fox and Franz Josef Glacier as we sat waiting to be brought to the helicopter!! Our conspicious green stickers were whipped off us and needless to say we were delighted and agreed not to tell the other passangers how much we paid....hmmm, hard deal! A little red helicopter flew down to pick us up and we cruised first over Franz Josef and then over to land on Fox on the neve . We had a birdseye view of these amazing formations that apart from a glacier in Argentina a completely unique [View Full Entry]

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Puzzling World just outside Wanaka is a child's dream. Tehre is a two level maze where you have to find the yellow, green, red and blue towers, with yellow being the hardest - and it def is! Despite flying through the other three we quickly got lost, made endless circles and met constant cul de sacs before finding yellow and then of course our way out. The cafe inside has on all various puzzles on all tables. These could keep you entertained for hours and I spent a long time trying to make circles with coloured lines on tiles! The Illusion [View Full Entry]

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Boarded the boat at 8.55am after crawling out of our "beds", board of wood in my case, however the gusting winds and fantastic scenery soon woke us up. Because we had a clear day we could totally appreciate Mitre Peak . We also saw the three main waterfalls of Milford Sound, which were roaring over the mountains due to the rains of the day before. All the trees visable on the surrounding mountains are actually all entertwined at the roots, thereby one falling causes and avalance of trees, seen by some of the clear paths [View Full Entry]

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