Hey everyone!! This one is going to have to be super duper quick because i really need to get to the airport soon! The next day we left Franz Josef and headed towards Makarora where we were to stay the night! On the way we stopped off a few interesting places for once.... the Fox Glacier, the mirror lake near Mt Cook and then a beautiful clear, but freezing river, where the brave ones had a swim! The drive wasnt pleasant though as for the second or third day the airconditioning wasnt working and it was soooo hot!! Although that made [View Full Entry]

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Hola! We then left for Taupo where we were supposed to be skydiving that afternoon but the place was still closed for New Years so we just wandered around town, had dinner together and then watched a film! We were supposed to be leaving the next morning but we decided to stay an extra day so we could skydive the next day and also because the Tongariro crossing (our next stop) was cancelled for the following day because of gale force winds, so we decided to stay in Taupo so we got another chance at skydiving and could hopefully do the [View Full Entry]

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Hello!!! The next morning was a mad rush as usual to leave on time, its hard enough getting myself out of bed and packed but ive also somehow become responsible for getting the boys out of bed too as it doesn’t even occur to them to set an alarm! Boys!!! The Tongariro crossing was absolutely amazing…we were soo lucky with the weather, we were all prepared for it to rain all day but it didn’t rain once and we had beautiful sunshine all day! I think in total the hike took us just over 7 hours, including an hours lunch break! [View Full Entry]

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Heylo!! The next day we headed off to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and our final stop in the South Island. It was a long journey getting there, we made a few stops but nothing very interesting to be honest…a big model of a carrot in a region famous for carrots and a big model of a welly (boot) in a town famous for their welly-throwing contest (very random!!)! Although we did stop off at the site of the biggest train disaster in New Zealand, where hundreds of families were killed on Christmas Eve, in 1953, after an earthquake (there [View Full Entry]

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Hola!! After getting our new driver, a lovely English girl (well woman actually... we thought she was a few years older than us but turns out shes 37!!! need to ask her for tips on how to stay looking so young hehe!!) we drove to Waitomo caves which was really cool….the first caves were glowworm caves - its pitch black and all you can see are tiny glowing green spots all over the cave ceilings which are the glowworms - they glow out of their bottoms hehe! :o) Although they are actually maggots, they are just called glowworms because it sounds [View Full Entry]

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Hello!! Despite the tiredness, the ferry ride was actually really nice, we had breakfast, watched a film and fell asleep and then sat outside as the ferry got to the South Island as the scenery was beautiful! I hadn’t been on the South Island for more than 5minutes before I managed to injury myself, slicing my toe open by accidentally kicking a clipboard left on the floor…ouch! We then got on our new bus, picking up about 20 people (about 19 of which were girls…apparently all the guys go on Kiwi Experience to pick up girls but all the girls go [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone!! The next morning we awoke in Abel Tasman to blue skies and glorious sunshine which confirmed the worst….skydiving would be on and so the nervousness set in! We got picked up at 8am and 8 of us, our little group of 6 and 2 others, drove to the skydiving place! We watched a video of skydiving, what we could expect and watched someone going up and jumping out of the plane etc. which made us even more nervous! We then had to decide who we wanted to go up with, because we were all taking up a camera man [View Full Entry]

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Hey!! We then drove to Maketu which was our cultural stop…it was amaaaazing!! We stayed with a local Mauri (indigenous people of New Zeland!) so had to learn the Mauri greeting on the way there so we could greet them properly, then had a Hangi meal and went in to the meeting house (marae) - in which no shoes, food or drink are allowed! The oldest guy in our group, Matt, was the chief and had to go through an official ceremony in which the Mauri chief placed a gift on the floor….if Matt had stepped over it he would have [View Full Entry]

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Hello again!! Got to Raglan early afternoon, did some emergency clothes washing in the sink and then started our surfing lesson at 3pm… by which point we had already been up 12 hours! The first hour we spent in the gym learning the technique, then we headed down to the beach, squeezed ourselves into wetsuits, straped our surf boards to our leg and then off we went! The guy told us that everyone who learns the technique perfectly in the gym somehow always manage to forget everything they’ve learnt as soon as they get in the water because they panic…we quickly [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone!! Left on the Stray bus on Tuesday 30th and although I was really looking forward to finally leaving Auckland and seeing New Zealand, I was a bit reluctant to have to start all over again on my own, making friends and was a bit worried I wouldn’t have a good group but it couldn’t have worked out any more perfect…the first guy I met on the bus (I was only the 3rd person on) was from Fleet - that’s the first person ive met traveling who is from Fleet and everyone on the bus is absolutely lovely and by [View Full Entry]

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