NZ3

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i have now gotten quite far behind on what we have been up to so this will be a very brief overview of the last couple of weeks.

we made it to kaikoura to see loads of seals and a big waterfall with a pool of about 50 seal pups after drinking 2 cans each of red bull. they were all buzzing, zipping around in the water jumping up and down. so amazing and qgain like the pnguins a couple came out of the water to stand right in front of megan, where she was so close she could have touched the little pup.

we drove on through blenhiem, picton and picked the windy cliff edge route to nelson then onto abel tasman national park. a bit of a drive away but it was so nice walking through the park finding some secluded beaches to rest at.

we then left the park the next day to get the ferry over to the north island from picton. this almost feels like a new venture on our trip as we heared lots about the 2 islands being soo diferent and we have got the excitment of seeing 3 of our friends and going to a wedding at the end of the month.

we arrive in 'welly' and make our way to robyns and chloes house with only robyn there as chloe was in the south island. robyn cooked us a an amazing 4 course meal. unbelievable for us who have been living on soup and beans recently. chloe came home the next day so we had time with them both catching up, reminicing and eating ice cream.

we left windy welly for napier where other than seeing some kids do somersaults on scooters we didnt really find anything there. the next morning we set off for lake taupo where we were keen to do various activities.

various people had given us some money for christmas and as a wedding gift to spend, 'on something fun' and not bills or fuel money. we agreed and enjoyed our next few days.

adventure world was first on our list. it being an 8 yr old birthday cross with gymnastics/circus class. megan loved it, in fact we both did and have the blisters on our hands to prove it. the next morning all our muscles ached alot but we had no time think about that as we set off for activity 2. now after a popular pole on facebook we decided not to chose what everyone was gunning for as everything was really expensive. instead we went for taupo cliff swinger. it involves being tied on to a long rope and dropped down the face of a cliff before being swung back up. bonus thing was we could do this together and got a free dvd and photos to prove our courage. it was nuts. it lasted a whole 30 seconds in all. pretty quick but enough to get both our hearts pounding and our bodies shaking in shoke for the rest of the day.



next day we headed south of lake taupo for some volcanoes made famous for being mt mordor on lord of the rings. we took the 6 hr tongoriro alpine crossing to see closer the 'epic' scale of the mountains. 1 slight problem was that we forgot our lunch which we had specialy made the night previous. as mrs parkman said, only you 2 could forget something as important as food. megan slipped our situation into conversation and gained an apricot chewy bar for someone, which was supposedly half a meal... so we shared that for lunch... defiently not enough and once we had got back to the van we tucked into our sandwhiches fairly quickly they were gone... much needed.



the next day we went for activity number 2 which was caving in waitimo. this was a 3 hr adventure taking us deep in the caves black water rafting. paddling on tractor inner tubes, jumping off waterfalls and seeing all the gloworms lighting up the cave. the water was freezing but it didnt matter as it was all so much fun and lasted longer than 30 seconds.



the next day we headed for hot water beach which is famous for having volcanic activity underneath the sand somewhere. so you can dig a hole at low tide, sit in it and have your very own hot springs. the beach was packed with people digging in the sand for this hot water, it was quite a sight. we were digging a bit aimlessly until we walked a bit further on the beach and stood watching everyone else. all of a sudden my feet started burning. just where we were standing a scrapping below the first layer of sand was water so hot we could barely sit in it. flippin crazy.



the next day is/was today (thursday) and we are making our way up to see sam and prepare for her wedding on saturday. looking forward to it! after the wedding we will be in our last week of travelling before going home!

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