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New Zealand, our 9th and final country.
We started off in Christchurch, on the east coast of the south island, and picked up Queenie, our little beaut of a campervan. All we did there was buy lots and lots of warm clothes from the NZ version of matalan. After Asia and Australia we were a bit underdressed!
Our first real stop was Dunedin and the Otago Peninsular, 4 hours south of Christchurch. We did a wildlife tour to see Yellow Eyed Penguins, NZ Fur Seals, Hooker Sea Lions and Royal Albatross, and see them we did. It was great, the penguins were so cute! The sea lions were a bit scary as they are huge (up to 400kg) and were lounging around on the beach, and hiding in the long grass. It was strange to see penguins and sheep living together on hills by the beach! Another top reason to go to Dunedin is Baldwin Street, the worlds steepest street! There was no way Queenie was getting her fat arse up it so we walked/ran it. The views from the top were quite nice but you've still got to have some screws loose to live at the top of
a small mountain.
Next stop was Milford Sound, on the west coast in the Fjordland National Park. On the drive there we decided to stop to have a look at a lake so pulled into a gravel car park. We never actually ended up getting to the lake as Rich drove us into a sea of gravel and we were well and truely bogged. After half an hour of trying to dig ourselves out with a dustpan and brush Rich headed off in pursuit of some help. Half an hour later we waved goodbye to a man named Tom and his shovel and were on our way again. We took a boat trip around Milford Sound (a fjord) and saw lots of pretty snowy mountains and waterfalls.
Kate drove the next leg to Queenstown, the highlight of the drive being the sight of a cow with its head stuck between two pillars of a telephone pylon and a couple of farmers trying to free it. Queenstown is the activity capital of the world (bungy, skydiving etc..) and all we did was go to the cinema (Indiana Jones!) and eat the best burgers ever (Fergburger, worth a trip to
NZ for). It was too cold for anything more adventurous! We did go up a mountain on a cable car and it was snowing, felt like Christmas in May! That night we sat in a pub by a big open fireplace drinking mulled wine to enhance our Christmassy feeling. We went to Wanaka next, as a stopover en route to the Fox Glacier and are glad that we did as we went to Puzzling World, home to the worlds first 3D maze (we were in there for an hour and a half!).
The Fox Glacier was one of the highlights of our entire trip. We took a helicopter ride up the glacier and, led buy a guide, explored the crevasses and ice caves for 2 and a half hours. It was brilliant, we had perfect conditions so climbed around the glacier under beautiful blue skies. Rich slid through a couple of tunnels under the ice and we both walked through some huge ice caves. The glacier reaches down to the rainforest and is one of only a few in the world to do so.
Kaikoura was our last stop in the south island before we caught the ferry
to the north. On another glorious day we did a whale watching boat trip to see Sperm Whales. It was bloody awesome! We saw 4 whales up on the surface and dive under into the 1600m deep water where they hunt giant squid up to 20m long; thankfully we didnt see any of them! We also saw a pod of 400 Dusky Dolphins leaping out of the water all around the boat. It was incredible, we didn't want to go back to shore.
After the whale trip we had a race against time to reach our ferry to the north. We booked it 3 hours before it left, from a 3 hour drive away. We like to keep things interesting!
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jess
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oh my god...they are the most amazing pics i have ever seen! i have tears in my eyes!! u 2 r so lucky. ive never been so jealous in all my life. i bet you dont want to come home :-( xxxxxxxxxxx