New Zealand - Goodbye Cougar crew.. Hello Geraldine!

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Getting out of bed so early every day is so depressing. It's even worse trying to pack in the dark and hoping not to wake the others! So this morning I am leaving my fave team, and I didn't even get the chance to say bye to Cougar because I didn't go out in the end! My bus is 30 mins before the others bus. So once I'm done and dusted it's time for goodbyes.. it's SO hard! These guys have been my rock while in New Zealand and helped me take my mind off missing certain people back in Oz.. and now I have to start a fresh all over again, new people.. the predictable conversations 'what's your name? how long are you in NZ? How long have you been travelling? Where you going next?'.. that's literally it! What a damn drag. I hate new people, I like old ones dammit! So we all had our hugs and goodbyes, boooo. I didn't like it one bit.. and then I was off!

The minute I arrived at our waiting stop there's some cheesy as hell American girl waiting there with such a typical American attitude. She was like 'oh my goddddddd I'm so glad you're here right because the driver is a guy who like totally tried to hit on me and then hit on my friends in front of me and I'm like HELLO? So I like slapped him right, so I'm scared he's gonna be like oh my god not her on my bus again!'...

kill me now.

Did I mention I hate new people? I just smiled and nodded. So yeah, our driver is a guy called chicken (omg how dare he hit on her friends in front of her WTF?) ...... He's alright but he's no Cougar. From my experience so far with different drivers she's definitely been the best so far, and that's not biased either. She's just a lot more fun and easier to talk to. It felt odd because he was driving the Cougar bus that we arrived in, it's actually called Cougar and has her name on the side. This turned out to be a bonus because it meant I could retrieve my underwater camera I stupidly left here! I also managed to land my usual seat, it felt odd being sat there without the others surrounding me.. they were all newbies EWWWWWWW. So it was quite emotional because as we were driving off the others arrived to catch their bus South, and we had a moment waving to each other aww! Once we were off I just put my ipod on and switched off. There wasn't even a point trying to converse and get to know people because I was getting off at Geraldine for the night to do white water rafting the next day. Stopped a few places along the way for people to take pictures, couldn't even be bothered doing that. There's only so many scenic pictures I can take and they just bore the hell out of everyone, even me eventually! Eventually we arrive in Geraldine. There are 5 of us altogether who are doing it. I automatically clicked with 2 of them called Jack and Kate. Soooo we all got transported by a bus with an awesome driver called Ron (don't you just love that name?) to the middle of nowhere! Literally a farm lodge thingy but it was lovely and homey. The people who had rafted that day were still there eating their bbq and looking at their photos.. that'll be us tomorrow! Basically Geraldine is the best place to do water rafting, it's $195 (£90) and with that you get accommodation, rafting, food and transport back up to Christchurch after.. so it's a pretty damn good deal! So Kate was reading a brochure of what there is to do in this area and turns out you can do a horse riding treck.. SCORE!! After being so disappointed I couldn't do it in Queenstown this was definitely a nice surprise. Also it was 10x cheaper than Qtown. So we rang up and asked if we could do it that evening and we could! The guy at our lodge gave us a lift down to where a guy called Bert ran the company. He is absolutely mental but hilarious. They had an adorable puppy too. He must be wadded, he had soooo many horses and they were all scattered everywhere all over his land which was massive. The horses were so well trained I couldn't believe it! All he did was beep the horn on his car and they all came running and ran up the hill to where the starting point. I had an adorable horse, can't quite remember the name but she was lovely and gentle. So I haven't ridden a horse since I was a sprog, and even that wasn't for very long.. so I was definitely rusty! Kate was awesome as her mum was actually a horse riding teacher so she put me to shame completely. Bert spotted her expertise skills and let her basically do as she pleased the whole ride and concentrated mainly on making sure I was okay. My horse was a little slower than the others but when she ran boy she ran! I nearly fell off but I survived. We waded through really deep rivers and stuff it was kind of great, but the weather was turning and starting to rain, not so pleasant! I did have a really good time though and I'm glad I did it. When we got back we all snuggled in front of the t.v and watched Lord of the rings 2, they had a few DVDS on so it was cinema night! I was obsessing over Dave coming online again though so was repeatedly checking facebook... eventually through the film I passed out and woke up at the end. I have never seen LOTR the whole way through! It drives me mad. I really wanted to watch it too because its filmed in NZ and wanted to see if I recognised anywhere. So I got into bed and checked fb again and my bb was online! YAYYYYY. We ended up having another mega long conversation and discussing how and when we will actually see each other again. It's killing me this! Then he said goodbye.. I hate this part of the conversation 😞 Sleep time.. time to get wet tomorrow! Night night xxx

xxxx

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