Adrenalin Junky! Me?

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Airport control

We noticed the difference as soon as we entered New Zealand, firstly their airport control is really anal, I swear the people who work there are a little power crazed, a little bit too much self importance. Luckily these first impressions were soon overcome by the friendly dustbin men and bus drivers right outside the airport. By this point I'd well and truly noticed the cold chilling my bones, at that point it was actually still about 15 but after Malaysia i felt like it was below freezing.
After catching the airbus into Auckland city center and lugging our stuff up to base we found ourselves in the first proper chain hostel leaving us wondering if all our accommodation in New Zealand would be that impersonal. Luckily the next morning we jumped onto the Kiwi bus headed for Mercury Bay where the accommodation was family run and far more homely. What were my first impressions of the Kiwi lot? well, mixed, we had rich girls not so rich girls, loud boys, older boys a couple and more to the point they were 90 percent English, not the cultural mixture I'd been expecting. With the bus driver Mar well we had our up and downs with him and at the beginning it was largely downs we found out later that it was because he'd just been on a holiday and was not happy bout being back at work!
I was gonna go through everything I did throughout the trip but seeing as we moved on everyday did had so many great moments and did so much stuff I'm just going to condense it down to the best bits!
The North island was our starting point traveling down we started off with some really great walks exploring coves and gold-mining areas, finishing off the day with Karaoke at mercury bay and a relax in the hot pools at Rotorua. We went to a Maori evening that was in truth a little disappointing as i felt we learnt little of their culture and did a skydive from 15000feet with 60 seconds of free-fall that was absolutely amazing. We went from being strangers to friends and got to do both level 5 white water rafting at river valley and black water rafting at Waitomo which involved going through caves in a rubber ring and occasionally pushing it in front to squeeze through tunnels or jumping of a waterfall backwards onto the ring and turning your lights of to see the trail of glowworms high on the ceiling above ours heads. All wonderful experiences often followed by a night filled with drinking games, dancing and scandal. We had some great nights one of the best being in Taupo the night before the skydive, we'd all been told that the weather was bad so we most probably wouldn't get to do and as a result didn't hold back only to be woken up at 9 the next morning to be told 'off to do a skydive in15 minutes' I've never sobered up so quickly in my life! But the good thing was it gave me less time to worry about it.
I think our teams biggest bonding moment was near the beginning when Ross came up with the idea for a Kiwi where someone yells 'Kiwi' and everyone bundles in a sort off rugby like fashion. It was started as a joke to confuse but soon became a daily occurrence and was called at the strangest of places such as bars and the geographical center of New Zealand! It helped to pull together an unlikely group although some of the bruises it caused where mammoth.
Onto the south Island; so far i have neglected to describe new Zealand, firstly it's beautiful, the south island more so than the north but both islands nonetheless. It's towns are strange with a population of a mere 4 million most of which live in Auckland their idea of a big town feels like the suburbs of Bournemouth to me, Christchurch and Ferndown maybe! they were often based around one long road making them feel like an old town from American western movie occasionally even the architecture supported this. We visited places from the lord of the rings unfortunately they'd had so many special effects added it was difficult to see the likeness but i can see where the inspiration came from. Unfortunately we didn't get to climb mt Awful that resides next to mt doom from the movies due to poor weather but we visited Hobbiton climbed Frans Joseph Glassier and i got to learn to snowboard in Queenstown.
Queenstown was the last stop on the Kiwi bus trip where we were all going to be together and as a result we painted the town red several town. Being well know as the party central of New Zealand and in peak ski season, the towns actual population of 14000 was dwarfed by incredible amounts of tourists hitting the slopes during the day and retiring to bars during the night. We had some amazing nights out topped by the last where we had an awards ceremony where shots were handed out for things ranging from best item of clothing, potty mouth to most likely to move to New Zealand and Dark horse (the ones i won).
That week in Queenstown was one of the greatest, it was a great personal challenge learning to snowboard and making the green runs on my last day felt like an amazing achievement worth the crazy amount of bruises i had acquired. This followed up by some very memorable nights out made it hard to leave the town and my new found friends!
Christmas with Gaz and Liz and reunited with Alison!!!!
Christchurch dissapointing but luckily still had cat matt and laura and a great couple of meals out, flashpackers for the last couple of nights
then on to brunei back to malaysia for a few days and home with me.
Thanks everyone who read my blogs sorry about the lack of pictures in the last few but i'm back now and therefore just publishing the stuff i've already written.
Finally thanks to Kiwi for a large amount of the pictures, gutted we've come to the end of our trip can't wait for another one

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