New Zealand - the land of sheep (Recovered?)

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We'd been psyching ourselves up for a big climate change between Oz and NZ, but my god is it cold. It's between 12 and 16 degrees here, which in England would probably mean a skirt, T-shirt and sunbathing, but here means jumpers, trousers and colds (the flip flops/thongs still make some appearances, but that's only because we are too lazy to wash loads of socks!).

On to more important things... We arrived in Christchurch which is really rather a depressing town. We spent a day here during which we did pretty much everything it has to offer: the botanical gardens, the art museum and the natural history museum (which included penguins - yipee! But stuffed - oh.) So we quickly got on the case of organising a bus around the 2 islands. The next day we were off on a loop of the South Island with the Kiwi Experience bus.

We made a good gang of friends with whom we played games at the back of the bus (oh yes, it's like school - aren't we cool!) and ended up spending most of our time with them.. The most exciting things we've done are go kayaking (Heloise)/walking (Laura) around the Abel Tasman national park, Jet boating in Westport and a day-long glacier hike on the Franz Josef glacier which was pretty tiring but worth it just to see the boys attempt a 'man challenge' which consisted of holding their hands in a pool of ice cold water. Afterwards, the winner said that after a few minutes he thought he'd lost his hand anyway, so he might as well win the challenge and keep it in even longer. Boys are a completely different species.

The views here really are beautiful, every coach trip is like being on the Lord Of The Rings film set, how very exciting! New Zealand looks does look quite a lot like Wales, and there are the millions of sheep here also... why did we come to the other side of the world?! Only joking. So now we are back in Christchurch, heading to the North Island the day after tomorrow. And then we have less than two weeks before we fly to South America... my, how time flies.

It's taken us a while to actually put photos on here, so we are now no longer in christchurch. In fact, we havent been in Christchurch for about a week. We've moved up to the North Island and spent a few days in Wellington, the capital, where we were reunited with a few of our friends from the South Island. So now we are in a bigger group again.. After Wellington, we headed north to Lake Taupo (a lake the size of Singapore) where Heloise went Skydiving!! (mum, I havent had a chance to tell you this yet so I hope you don't have a heart attack.. it was really really good fun!!). The next day we were up a 5 am to go on an 8 hour walk across volcanoes (where the mordor sequences of LOTR were filmed!!) The weather was so bad, however, that we were forced to turn back before one of us was swept off the mountain side - we arrived back at base 4 hours later, all wet and miserable. We were so cold that we couldn't dial the number of the tour operators, and even when we eventually managed (it took a good 3 people huddled around a mobile), there was no reception... damn! So all 6 of us hitched a lift with a random couple to the local pub where we were eventually picked up and taken back to the hostel. What a day.

That was yesterday, and we have now moved north again to Rotorua, a very smelly town, due to its mud pools which apparentlt emit a load of sulphur. Nice. And the weather has still not improved!

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