We have arrived in Queenstown! Adventure capital of the world. Dun dun dun.
While we're here we're doing the nevis bungy jump and the nevis canyon swing. And I've already paid for them so I can't even back out at the top when I get scared. Which I most definitely will.
Blog posts have been few and far between. I apologise for that. I have very rarely had wifi available in New Zealand and because we've only been in a lot of places for one night we've been too busy exploring for me to write a blog.
So here goes, a whole week in New Zealand in one blog post.

Stop one; Christchurch.
Now this was a weird place, as it's still very obviously has all the damage from the earthquake a few years ago. In the central part of the city, huge tower blocks are empty, shops are closed, buildings are ruined, yet despite this it still has a glimpse of hope.
The re:start mall is a collection of shops all inside corrugated iron buildings and you can see developments and building work all over the place. It seems like the recovery process has taken so long that people have given up and have moved to different parts of the city. It was an interesting place to see, but not to stay for a long period of time.

Stop two; Kaikoura.
Here we went crayfishing and deep sea fishing with some crazy kiwi men, who drove the boat far too fast and thought we were ridiculous as we didn't know how to fish. I caught 4 fish though (two at one time on one occasion) so I was pretty chuffed with my skills on my first attempt at fishing. We even got to eat the fish, called perch I think, which was delicious.
The town itself was pretty small but is known for whale watching. We didn't do that as it was expensive. However it also has a seal colony living along the peninsula so it was pretty cool to walk alongside seals in their natural habitat, I would definitely recommend that. (Don't get too close though as one growled at me and it was so scary.)

Stop three; Kaiteriteri. (This blog post photo is of Kaiteriteri)
This beautiful little seaside town seemed like a perfect place to camp if you had a campervan. It was just on the outskirts of Abel Tasman national park so had plenty of activities available but as we were only there for one night and left early in the morning the next day we had very little time to explore the park instead walked up the track to the most beautiful beaches.

Stop four: Westport.
I don't actually know why we stopped here as it wasn't the most interesting place. So I'll move on.

Stop five: Franz Josef.
Now you're in glacier country. Where it rains. An awful lot.
Due to the weather most people weren't able to do their hikes on the actual glacier, so expecting rain (as NZ has been pretty rainy for us thus far) we decided instead to go lake kayaking where we could see the glacier in the mountains and the rainforest around the lake. The lake was a weird mixture of being so dark and tar-like but it also produced the most amazing reflections of the rainforest and the mountains and it was just the most stunning scenery to kayak around. Although those people who did hike on the glacier also said it was amazing so if it's not raining and you have the money, that might be worth doing as well.

Stop six: Wanaka.
One of the most beautiful places in New Zealand in my opinion. The mountains behind the lake had the most mysterious low lying clouds surrounding them. It looked so surreal. Any photos we took of it didn't encapsulate the vastness and the beauty of the lake.
We didn't have enough time to do very much in Wanaka but we climbed up two thirds of Mount Iron, to see the most spectacular views of the lake and we went for an evening walk around the lake.
As you can see, we often just go on a walk and look at stuff for quite a long time to absorb the sights and sounds of the amazing places we're visiting.

Stop seven: Queenstown.
Here we are.
It has been a pretty crazy week as you can tell. I'll try to blog post more frequently but as you can see, it is a lot of effort to do this often.
Oh well, if anyone has actually read all that, I am flattered. If not, I'm not surprised.

Enjoy,
Bye xxxx