We arrived in Christchurch and had no idea where Nathans friend's house was so we went looking for a hostel called the YMCA, we couldn't find it so it was a bit awkward four blokes in a camper van asking passers-by where the YMCA was. Luckily people knew what we were on about so it was ok. Christchurch was hit by a massive earthquake about three years ago and was pretty much destroyed, a lot of people had said to us that there is nothing to do there and that most of it is abandoned but we didn't really know to what extent. It was really weird, some areas of the city centre are completely abandoned, some buildings a virtually a pile of rubble on the floor. And loads of the roads are closed, making it even hard to find our way around. Apparently the government don't give enough money to the city to repair it so the work has taken so long to get done. Eventually we found the hostel, Nathan went in and rang his mate and he drove to the hostel so we could follow him to his house.

The house is really nice, and big. Four of them share it but there are three big sofas in the lounge and a spare single mattress so we all crashed in the lounge, so there is plenty of room for us all. The lads were really welcoming and we all got on straight away. It was really weird being in an actual house just chilling on the sofa watching TV for the first time in 4 months. Us four all chilled out the next day, while the others went to work. We all agreed we would buy and cook dinner that night for them letting us stay there, which was the least we could do, for free accommodation and free unlimited Wi-Fi. That night we all watched the State of Origin match which is the final rugby league game in Australia. All the other lads had spent quite a bit of time in Australia so knew all about it, us two however didn't really have much idea on how rugby league works compared to rugby union. They taught us all the rules though and we got quite into it. We both said to each other that after spending the amount of time we are spending in New Zealand and Australia we can see ourselves getting right into rugby. Queensland had won for the last 8 years so we were all gunning for the under dogs New South Wales, and it worked NSW won 12-8 however the final is best of three so will have to try watch the next leg. During the day we looked at the weather in Fox Glacier and it looked good over the weekend so we rebooked the skydive for the Friday morning and set off the next morning for a five hour drive back to Franz Josef.