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Published: April 2nd 2007
Skydiving
Is it a bird, is it a plane etc etc blah blah... The ferry crossing between the north and south islands was pretty smooth, and we arrived in Nelson to beautiful weather for our first south island overnight stop.
On arrival at 3:30pm, Laura headed straight for the airport near Abel Tasman National Park, where she met James (from Essex) who she was to jump 13,000 feet out of a plane with! Laura climbed into the small plane after James, and was horrified to discover that she had to sit on his lap for the entire ascent to 13,000 feet! The plane ride was fairly cosy with eight people crammed into a pretty tiny plane. Laura and James were the last to jump, and therefore had the pleasure of watching the others literally disappear out the door of the plane! Eeek! Before Laura knew it, James had them backflipping out of the plane for the start of a 50 second freefall! Awesome! This was followed by a gentle, parachute-controlled descent over the absolutely stunning Abel Tasman National Park. TO THE MAAAAAX!!!
The following day, we both headed back to Abel Tasman with quite a few other backpackers from the Magic Bus. We took an hour-long water-taxi ride north, through the
Skydive Crew
Celebrating life! national park and then tramped around 15km along the coast. The scenery was absolutely beautiful and we stopped and swam at some lush beaches along the way.
The sunniest town in New Zealand was pretty darn dark and wet the following day, so what better way to spend it than in the hostel's free spa and sauna! Luckily though, our final day in Nelson was pretty sunny, so once again we put on our hiking boots and set off to 'the centre of New Zealand!' This was actually only about a 30 minute walk from the hostel, but up a pretty steep hill. The sculpture-type-thingy that marked 'the centre of New Zealand' is fairly pathetic, but the view over Nelson is lovely with Abel Tasman in the distance.
So from sunny Nelson, we're headin down to Franz Josef i.e. glacier country....!
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