The ferry to the south island is about 3 hours, the views are supposed to be amazing, but I hate to say I fell asleep for basically the whole journey! :/ Its a good thing we go back to the north island! Our first stop was Kaiteriteri, driving through Marlborough Valley (very scenic and famous for its Sauvignon blanc) and Havelock- the greenlip mussel capital of the world. We arrived lateish and left the next day so we didn't get to see much, but I did have a walk along the beach that evening, which was nice. We also made the most I having an oven- I think everyone cooked pasta bake, and watched some hilarious come dine with me episodes. Very productive.

Next stop Westport. The weather was basically ridiculous! It rained so much, we spent the evening watching films with cider and chocolate :) the next morning loads of stuff was flooded- literally fields, roads and rugby pitches submerged! We stopped to see the buller river- which has the greatest flood discharge of all New Zealand's rivers (apparently its not uncommon to see the odd sheep or cow floating along after so much rain). No sheep or cows but one super strong river!!

We headed to lake Mahinapua, stopping in Greymouth, famous for its greenstone (pounamu) which is very significant to Maori. Lake Mahinapua basically consisted of the place where we stayed (and only kiwi ex stay there now), a beach and a river, which was also flooded. It's owned by a guy called Les, he's 80 something and won't take crap from anyone. We had a yummy stake dinner and then had a fancy dress party in the poo pub. The winning costume (Jens amazing penguin outfit) won a canyon swing! It's was lots of fun except our room stank of damp and got so hot at night, me and Emily had to stand outside at 4 in the morning thinking we were going to die!!

Then we headed to Franz Josef, stopping at the bushman centre on the way. We were all a bit too hungover to make a decision about whether we wanted to go to the museum bit of the bushman centre or not and the owners were not best pleased- verging on very scary, can we please leave now!! We also stopped to see Lake Marpurika- which was AMAZING! So pretty!! Franz Josef is small but really nice. We wanted to do the glacier hike, but the trips had been cancelled the last few days because of the weather :/ we were so lucky the next morning to have lush weather!! The trip used to be a full day hike, but part of the glacier has collapsed, so you now have to get a helicopter on to the glacier and back down again. Helicopter ride was pretty cool (we even got to wear the headphones! ;) ) and the views were amazing! The glacier was so good!! We hiked for about 3 hours, seeing caves (crawling through one or two!), cravasses etc. again some amazing views!! Definitely another highlight! Franz Josef descends from the southern alps to less than 300m above sea level amidst the temperate rainforest- one of only three in the world to do so! We then spent the evening in the hot pools (it's a hard life), there were three different pools (36-40 degrees) and their undercover but outside so that was pretty cool. The next morning we headed to Wanaka.