Advertisement
Published: July 17th 2006
Hello all and greetings from New Zealand! We have just had one of the best weeks of our travels. We started off in a cold Auckland which was bit of a shock to the system! It was nice to be in a city again and we busied ourselves round the shops (mostly on a hunt for jumpers!) Auckland is just a nice place to explore on foot and we spent time just wandering the streets and alleys. We visited the sky tower and watched others throw themselves off it! On our second day we took a free bus tour of the city and surrounds and got to see the beach and some great views of the city and surrounding landscape. After that it was a bus journey to the middle of the island to stay in Lake Taupo. This place has a reputation as one of the extreme sport centres and caters for all adrenalin junkies! It is an outstandingly beatiful lake, surrounded by forsests and snow peaked mountains and we had a great view from the hotel. (Had attempted a hostel but was grossed out by it and made us change!) We had a easy couple of days exploring the
Kyle sees an alien
think 1930s b movie.....area. We went to a beatiful waterfall and then explored some crazy landscape called craters of the moon. This was land filled with craters and steam rivets just coming out of the ground. It definately had an other worldly feel with bubbling pools of mud, (a bit Shrek like!) I amused myself by pretending to be a spaceman! (Kyle was not amused!) Our second day we spent in the thermal hot spas which the region is famous for. It was really bizzare stripping down to your bikini in temperatures of 5 degrees! But such a joy to drop into 40 degrees of heat and steam rising from the earth...even as the rain came down! They even had private pools so Kyle and I could chill out and relax away from the kids! It was very relaxing and strangely exhausting. We definately needed refreshment in the pub that evening, where Kyle befriended the barman and played New Zealand beer tasting games with him, Jilly Golden eat your heart out! It all smelled like beer to me!
Definately one of the highlights of the trip so far was yesterday where we got to sky dive over the lake. We were really
lucky with the weather and got to go up on one of the few planes that made it up that day. So there we were strapped to men, flown backwards up to twelve thousand feet and basically chucked out! My nutter of an instructor back flipped us out! I can not begin to describe the fear and amazing invigaration as we fell. Was like nothing on earth! It was seriously fantastic with winds of a minimum of 200km an hour and the free fall lasted 45 seconds before they pull the parachute! NUTS! The parachute ride down was great with a stunning view. I thought we were heading for a patch of mossy grass only to realise it was a forest, and those white dots..sheep loads of them! We did kiss the ground when we landed and have a a very amusing dvd to show you when we get back. It was just brilliant and we are still buzzing on the high of it today! In a couple of hours we head to Fiji and are looking forward to some sunshine, we will avoid the seats at the emergency exits in case we are overtaken by the will to jump
again!
Lots of love to you all from Nic and Kyle (still high as kites!)x x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.118s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 17; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0598s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Alex
non-member comment
WOOOOOOO!!!
Hey guys! Congrats on the skydive. Sounds awesome, and the pics are fantastic! You must be proud of yourselves! I'm envious - of the skydive (the weather was too crap for me to do one when I was there) - and of the fact you're still away and heading to Fiji!! So, so jealous!! Actually I shouldn't complain - the weather in Scotland is amazing at the moment and I'm still jobless (haven't made much effort on that front yet, lol!) so have time to enjoy it. Keep having fun! See you when you get back! :-)