You only live once...?!

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Okay. i think the last time i wrote was in Franz Joseph right?

i am blatently showing i have too much time on my hands...:S

we travelled to Wanaka after Franz Joseph, stopping in Fox to pick up some people who had been skydiving. had a walk around Lake Matheson which literally mirrored the mountains in the background (mount cook being one of them)
v cool.

Wanaka was beautiful. in a valley by a lake with these huuge mountains behind. i can so imagine going there for a ski season.. would be amazing. they had a random photo exhibition by this landscape artist along the lake side... this guy had basically flown around the world and taken loads of ariel photos of human activity.. or globalisation (i think that was the title... something along those lines anyway!)

THE MOST RANDOM THING ON THE PLANET HAPPENED. i bumped into Patrick Maude-Roxby... just walking down the road in Wanaka. so so so so so so wierd. so we stopped and had a chat...

Left for Queenstown the next day... we stopped at the Karawau bridge Bunjy site.... watched a film on the history of bunjy... and saw footage of AJ Hackett jumping off the Eiffel tower...and promptly being carted off by french police...

Our driver, Smiley, told one of the girls that he would pay for her to do a bunjy if she did it topless... (i think it was a rather drunken suggestion the night before...) but she took it on... but wouldnt do it on her own... so they did a tandem :S which was absolutely hilarious!

Queenstown, being well known for its adreneline activities... somehow forced me to sign up for the Nevis Jump - which is 134m high.. the highest in New Zealand.

crazy.

so i spent the next 16 hours absolutley crapping myself. but when we actually came to the jump... it wasnt so bad. i saw about 20 people do it before it was my turn, and the fact that none of them died was a reassuring thing. 8 seconds of freefall before the bunjy kicked in :S i screamed so much!

you can watch me making a fool of myself when i get back... i bought the DVD 😉

Today Kate and I hopped on the Milford Explorer bus (at 6.45am i hasten to add... DEATHLY HOUR OF THE MORNING)
10hours on the bus. Dire. but it was so beautiful. so that was good. we had a 2 hour journey around the sound (which was mis-named, its actually a fiord - as it was formed by glaciers) and we also got to go to the Underwater Observatory. so we saw lots of Milford Fish swimming around, and loads of colourful coral - including Black coral, which is actually white.

so thats pretty much it. Oh. except i managed to delete all my photos from Wellington to Lake Mahinapua. which is more than a bit frustrating, as i had some brilliant ones! and kate has developed an obsession with landscapes, so she has very few photos of people or events. 😞 im going to see if i can recover some of them...

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Photos

On the Boat
Kate, Me, Jess and Kurt