Sweet As Bro

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Hey all, sorry its been a while but I'm in New Zealand,. and it's action packed and full of adventure, so I haven't had a lot of time to update the blog. Since landing in Christchurch last week on Wednesday we have been doing a tour of the South Island. We started in Christchurch, NZ's third biggest city and after watching a thrilling game between Manchester United and Chelsea in the Champions League final we didn't really stick around because there's not a great deal to do. We then went up to Kaikoura which is beautiful scenery, it was just a pity about the weather not being to great, but me being my Father's son I went out for a walk in the rolling gren hills anyway. It was a pretty small place famed for its whale watching but the weather was so bad the trip was called off, hopefully Nelson on the West coast would bring better weather. The West coast of New Zealand is one of the most scenic drives in the world, and over the next 6 days we would be travelling down the coast to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. Nelson was our first stop on the west coast and this is where we spent the next night. The town itself is quite small, but is actually the largest on the West coast, with 43,000 people calling it home. We arrived at sunset and made the short journey up the the centre hill of the town but some great pictures.

The next morning we stopped at a lake to do a small walk around through the trees and around the shores, the weather was amazing and the pictures are absolutely awesome, the walk was very enjoyable as well. We spent the that night at Westport which was a smaller town further down the coast. We did some power jet boating here at dusk which was very fun, with 820 horsepower behind the boat, you fly at 60mph over the water and throw in some crazy turns. You get very wet and it's alot of fun. Next onto an isolated pub on the beach, where Les an 82 year old pub owner ran us a fancy dress party, again loads of fun and a good chance to hang out and get to know the rest of the people on our bus. The costumes were crazy and some a little bizarre, I was a ninja.

Today we did the most adventurous activity of the trip so far. A Sky Dive. Over the Saint Josef Glacier and from a parallel with the Southern Hemisphere's highest mountain, Mount Cook. Me and Ross where up at 7am and had to catch a ride 90 mins down the road and then it was go time. 12,000 feet up, 45 second free fall, the eqivalent of passing a 20 storey building every second. Me and Ross were the last pair to go and at about 4000ft I asked how high we were thinking it was pretty high, at only a third of the height it slowly began to sink in the scale of the dive. Up to now we had not been to nervous, but when the door was open and the pilot gave the OK and Ross tumbled out of the plane, it really sunk in. Slowly I inched forward and leaned over the doorway, the wind gushing in and swirling around the cabin. The next thing I knew I was backflipping wildly in nothing and the plane was high above me in the sky. I was Skydiving! The freefall was over just as quickly as it had began, it was so quick. It was an awesome experience, and words really cannot do justice to the experience. Tomorrow we are hiking up a Glacier. Did I mention I love New Zealand. It's awesome here and there's so much to do. We end up in Queenstown in a few days the adventure capital of the country. I cannot wait.

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Comments

[Mum]

Wow!
New Zealand looks amazing. Must have been fantastic flying over the glacier. I think you're very brave doing the sky dive, it must have been very scarry jumping out of a plane. X