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Published: March 27th 2008
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After three weeks in New Zealand we are now back to where we started in Christchurch.
It's only been about ten days since we wrote our last entry but it feels like about two months so if this entry seems a little hazy its because I can't quite remember what we've been doing!!
From Queenstown we headed up the West coast of the South Island towards the Fox Glacier staying at some more lakeside camps and killing ourselves slowing with a few more cycle rides! One journey involved stopping off and some lovely looking crystal clear 'blue pools' as it was a sunny day me and Han didn't hesitate to strip off, claiming it can't possibly me as cold as the English sea...how wrong we were it was literally ice cold, so after diving in we could barely speak it was so cold! Needless to say itwas an extremely short swim!!
After the excitement of the Glacier we headed to Hokitika 'the home of Jade', this turned out not to be quite so exciting with every shop nearly containing the same over-priced items! The highlight of this day for me (Kate) was without doubt having the best icecream
so far in NewZealand, a after dinner mint in a waffle cone (this just abour sums up how exciting Hokikita was!). I think we were all glad when it was time to leave and we headed up to Punakiki for two days which is famous for being 'the home of the pancake rocks'. We headed to the rocks the next morning for high tide - this is when water erupts from the blow holes, wasn't as spectacualr as I was expecting but the walk around the rocks was really pretty. That afternoon we decided to go on a forrest walk around the valley with Brad and Melaine which involved 'wading' though an unbridged river and to everyones amusement I managed to lose my balance and drop my shoes in the river so had to walk the rest of the three hour walk in flip flops!
Afer Punakiki the next stop was the Abel Tasman national park where the first item on the agenda was skydiving!! I was't really that nervous it until we arrived at the place, then I swiftly went from relaxed to absolutly petrified!! Me and Han both got to go in the same plane which was
cool as I got to give her petrfified 'I really hope I don't die' looks in the plane on the way up!! We both had instructors who had lived in Devon at some point which was quite random but was a good topic of conversation on the flight up as it took 20mins to get to 13,000 ft for our jump. I can't even describe the terror I was feeling when the instructor I was strapped to said 'right now I'm going to open the door', I was last in the plane which meant first out!! (i'm getting scared now just writing this and thinking about it!) Once we were hanging out ready to jump there was a wing camera taking pictures so you can see my terrified look for yourselves in the pics! Once we had jumped it was an amazing feeling and we both loved it and would def do again!! On our second day in Abel Tasman we went on sea kayaking which was really good as we got to go around all the golden sandy beaches, we couldn't move on arms properly for the next days it was definitely worth it!
From the Abel Tasman
the next stop was Nelson where it was time for us to say goodbye to the tour bus we had lived in for the preious two weeks and all the people we'd met, this was pretty sad and we both felt quite abandoned when it drove off and we were with all our stuff to carry and no tent to sleep in! We headed to our hostel to discover we hasn't been booked in which was a bit annoying but we ended up staying in a really nice hostel with a swimming pool so it was probably a blessing in disguise. the onyl downside of it was on the second night we ended up sharing a room with two French guys, one of who was an incredibly loud snorer. For those of you know my own snoring habits might think this is a bit hypocritical but trust me I'm nothing on this guy, it was so loud his friend eventually had to wake him up to tell him to shut up!! One thing we're discoering fast is that it's virtually impossible to get a decent nights sleep in hostels and there's alway someone snorting away!
From Nelson we hoped
on another tour bus just for the night to take us back to Christchruch via Kaikoura where we had the eagerly awaited dolphin swim! I was adamanet before the trip that I had no interest in swimming with dolphins but after speaking to people on the previous tour who all made it sound amazing we were both sold! We were all up bright and early ready to head the boat, however the taxi driver we were waiting for wasn't so we ended up being a bit late. Once there we had to super-quickly get changed and into the bus to get the boat out to where the dolphins were, I'm going to hand over the Han to write this bit as I don't think I'll do it justice and my experience was tainted by having to throw up into a bucket once we were out of the water! Han: On the way to the dolphins we saw albatross, I was very excited as I was looking forward to these almost as much as the dolphins. When we reached the dolphins there was a pod of over 300. We put on our snorkels and jumped off the boat. So many dolphins
Jade collecting!
Hannah thought these were all valuable stone but turned out to be just regular worthless rocks! it was amazing. They were coming so close to us wanting to play. We jumped on and off the bout about 4 times so we could get in amongst the dolphins. Eye contact was the key and several times dolphins would spin in circles with me. It really was a great experience as the dolphins seemed to want to play with us as much as we did with them. Then Woje was sick! And called a sissy english girl by one of the french guys on our tour, not going well with the french as she was previously called an 'english liar' by our french dorm mates!
Forgot to write about the glacier but out of internet time and I'm sure anyone who read to this point is utterly bored of our ramblings to I'll just say the glacier was fanastic and checkout the pics!
Off the Fiji on Saturday for scuba diving and relaxing - hopefully in Hammocks so we'll post when we get back.
Hope all is well in Sunny England,
Love Kate and Han xxxx
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H's Dad
non-member comment
Excellent
Looks and sounds like your having a great time. Keep it up.