Totally Extreme!!! ☺


I',m sitting in the departure lounge of Christchurch airport, writing about the last week in New Zealand.

We left Kaikoura and drove and drove and drove, until we reached a place called Twizel, which had an awesome park - in fact it had 2. We stayed by like Tekapo which is GREEN! The reason it is so green is because when the glaciers came down is gouged out the lake's shape and left a load of white powder - which is rock dust. This makes the water go green and milky looking.

Wanaka was the next place we stayed, it was one of my favourite places yet because all the people were nice, and there was a nice atmosphere in the backpackers where we stayed - called Mountain View. The room was small and simple, me and Oliver slept on the floor on mattresses. At Wanaka we went to puzzleworld - it was puzzling....we had a go in a giant maze, managed to get to all the corners (which was the challenge) but then we couldn't find the way out - and Dad got hungry, Mum was bursting for the toilet, so we bailed it. We went into the illusions room - it was really funny, when Dad looked through this window, I looked giant and mum looked - weird! They also had a snooker table where the balls rolled uphill.

After Wanaka we headed to Queenstown where we met up with an old friend - Adrian. He's a 'super athlete' who runs 100km races, marathons for training and usually wins or comes in the top three. He's really nice and met up with us a few times to show us around. In Queenstown everyone is looking for an adrenaline thrill - there's loads to do and we did it all!!!! (Well, apart from the bungy jumping - mum and dad didn't fancy it!)

Here are some of the things that we did:
The Shotover Jet
…..was totally wicked......our driver, Simon, kept going heading straight for the canyon walls and then turning at the last minute.....no, last SECOND. The boat was big, red, loud and fast, it did 80 knots ph. It only needed about 3 inches of water, except when it did 360 degree turns, then it needed deeper water.

The Queenstown Luge
This was Oliver's favourite; to get up there we had to go on a cable car - which was a bit bouncy. Then there was another ski lift up to the top of the luge. There were two tracks - a scenic one (which everyone had to do first time down) and there was an advanced track - which has jumps and almost vertical drops. It was scary until you learnt how to drive.

Dad's comment on the luge: I was run off the road twice by a certain speed freak - who had no idea what she was doing - I am now not looking forward to teaching Hannah to drive!!!!! and we are going to sell the Subaru before she does!!!

The Helicopter Ride
I've never been in a helicopter before, this was so small you could barely call it a helicopter! But it was totally awesome!!! We had been cancelled twice, because of the bad weather and major wind conditions. We were really hoping that we could go, as we had to leave Queenstown that afternoon.

When you get to the helicopter, we had a full briefing of what to do and what not to do - like not to walk behind it, as the engine gets up to 600 degrees and there is a big tail rotor to watch out for. We jumped into the helicopter, there was only enough room for us and pilot. We wore these headphone thingies, so that we could talk to each other and the pilot - but you couldn't say anything just to one person - if you said it to one you said it to all.

Our pilots name was Nick - he was a really good driver. As soon as we got onto the glacier, we had millions of snow ball fights - then we realised that we WERE ON A GLACIER!!!

You could see the canyons in the ice, they were deep enough for you to stand in, and not reach the top. They looked blue from the sky.


We are now going to to fly back to Auckland, and then on to Raratonga - where we landed yesterday afternoon. We are all really confused by the dateline thingy, as it's already yesterday, and we haven't taken off yet.

Please keep your comments coming - we love to get them....bye bye for now

Hannah x

---

---