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Hello all!
We are now on the Kiwi Experience! Which is interesting..... Actually we are getting to see a lot more of New Zealand than would have otherwise been possible so I shouldn't be too rude! We left in a little minibus to get to Westport to meet up with the big green bus. Westport was a little town with nothing in it, and the weather was so miserable when we arrived that only one girl wanted to do the jet boating when we got there everyone else shivered in front of the fire in the hostel. The next day we made our way down to lake Mahinipou (or somehting like that) We stopped off for a walk at Cape foulwind so called by Captain Cook when he sailed around New Zealand. There we saw a large colony of fur seals. We then drove along for an hour or so until we arrived at the pancake rocks and blow holes for another walk and some lunch.. It was then back on the bus until Greymouth where we alighted to find some thing to wear to the horror themed party that evening. Feeling a bit of a tight wad I managed
to create my costume for two dollars! I purchased a small soft toy sheep (appropriate for New Zealand) and the put duct tape across his mouth and went as silence of the lambs! Genius I thought, although it took a bit of prompting for other people to get it!
The evening at the pub was started with walk across the deserted beach and then a massive steak and venison barbeque - it was so good to have some meat - travelling is turning me into a vegetarian! It actually ended up being a good night, everyone made a big effort to get involved and there were about 70 of us there as a bus of 'agents' was following our bus down the route. Unfortunately my cold has been creeping up on me and i felt shocking by the end of the night - and by heck it was cold in bed!
Felt even worse the next day so I started taking my antibiotics as I was pretty convinced I had tonsilitus and I wanted to be fit for a days hike across the glacier on Sunday! It was a strange bus ride down to Franz Joseph Glacier, we
stopped off at this museum where we learnt about how the crazy Kiwis caught the deer from the hills by jumping out on top pf then from helicopters - only the kiwis can turn everything into an adventure sport! We arrived at Franz Joseph and went to the hiking centre for a breif about our 8 hour walk the next day and saw the forecast for rain! urgh!
Thankfully Sunday was a glorious day and the hike was just incredible. We were given spikes to wear on our boots to walk on the slippy ice, and for the first 40 minutes climbed up the ice over a series of steps carved into the ice, ropes and bridges; it was steep and hard work. By the time we arrived up on the first ice fall - 'defiance' it was lunchtime and we stopped for a sandwich before investigating the rest of the ice. Once we were up there the surroundings were so beautiful. The ice had a blue glow to it and we were so lucky with the weather it was incredibly bright and clear (although very cold). THere were now no steps in the ice so anywhere we went
we had to tramp and climb or our guide had to cut steps for us with the massive pick axe she was carrying! We squeezed through tiny crevises a couple of metres long slipping along the sides of the ice. The caves in the ice we pretty good fun to climb through as well, all though I was quite worried the glacier might move and trap me in there! We all looked quite funny in our matching outfits tramping around - a bit like blue smerfs! we made pour way down at about 5 that evening and as soon as we took our metal spikes off my feet felt like they were flying! Needless to say I slept pretty well that night!
THe day after we made opur way to a pretty town called Wanaka and then on to Queenstown the day after that. Wednesday we dragged ourselves up at 6am to go to Milford Sounds which was just so beautiful. We had a cruise through the massive Fjords that were carved out by glaciers about 50 thousand years ago, and are so high and dense that they believe there are still species living there that are extinct elsewhere!
We spent the rest of our time enjoying Queenstowns night life and taking in the beautiful mountain fringed scenery before making our way back up to Christchurch.
In Christchurch we went to the Super fourteen Rugby match between the Crusaders and bulls which was pretty cool, we even donned some black and red stripes on our faces in support of New Zealand Crusaders but they easily won it anyway! Gald we had the opportunity to see some of the local sporting talent - most of the team are from the all blacks so the standard was pretty high on our side. i even manged to cry "YIS" instead of "YES" just to sound truly authentic...
After Christchurch we went to Kaikoura where I went Whale watching and saw 3 sperm whales which was pretty amazing as I had never seen whales before. I can safely say they are absolutely massive! Just to top the trip off we were visited by some dusky dolphins who performed some acrobatics over the bow of the boat on the trip back to shore.
We are now in Wellington in the North island where it is raining 😞 I only hope the
weather will cheer up for us again so we can do the volcano hike in Taupo.
Lots of love to you all
Sassy
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