DAY 11 - CHRISTCHURCH TO FOX GLACIER happy christmas. and its fancy dress. we get into our costumes before brekkie, both kevin and i have santa suits with some additional festive messages written on the suits. i think you can guess the type of messages used. we have plenty of reindeer, including 1 hawian reindeer, a couple of mrs santa clause. paul and joanne seem to have made the best effort coming as a xmas present and an angel, pauls hood does look a bit like a festive hood though, not intended im sure. after brekkie we get on the decorated bus. we started with a little bit of tinsel and a baby xmas tree stolen by a former passenger from the base backpakers in auckland. i try to increase the decorations by making paper chains, xmas lanterns and cut out snowmen and trees. then i get tottally upstaged by joony making leaping frogs, roses, swans and many other intricate paper animals. we do eventually get some fairy lights on the coach too. as we set off to fox glacier joanne and paul anounce that they have just got engaged, which is very nice. out come the beers to celebrate. many congratulations again. we head off down the caterbury plains towards the southern alps, the scenery is jsut stunning. we stop breifly at aurthers pass for a leak, unfortunately of all the activities i have done on this holiday i go and hurt my back by falling in a ditch on the way to taking a leak in the bushes, but at least i didnt spill my beer. it must have been quite a sight for the passing japanese tourists seeing a number of santa's and reindeer peeeing at the side of the road. we get to the town of hokitika on the wild west coast. more like the wet west. its raining heavy. we look around a jade factory which is boring so me kev and neil head to the beach in the pouring rain. after going the wrong way we head in the direction of the beach, nothing is open in this town with it being xmas day and all. we get to the pebble beach whgich is just covered in varoius sizes of woo. we watch a dog carrying some kind of animal about a third its size in its mouth, no idea what cause as we get near he runs ofthinking we might steal his catch. which was nice. try a few skimmers in the water before heading back for our xmas lunch. not quite roasst turkey and all the trimmings, more of a cold meat platter. which is nice. oh and lots of crisps. no worries we have champagne, which goes down nice. neil and i help ourselves to a couple extra as they would only go to waste. and were off again past franz josef glacier towards our lodge on fox glacier. very basic accomaodation but the view up the mountain is good. we play a bit of football in the car park ensuring we hit as many cars as possible, before attempting to play table football with rocks and paper and lighters, well anything apart from a ball which we dont have. we were not successful. dinner was quite nice, we carry on drinking throughout the night with the added bonus of kareoke. strangely i get picked to go up 1st and do a duet of i got u with mandy, would have been nice to have been warned before hand. we were appauling. which was nice. later i sneek up and do barbie for a laugh, come on barbie lets go party. reminds me of the ken and barbie joke that i wont tell as my mum probably reads this. neil, kevin and i try to get evryone to do the roxanne drinking game while we sing, nice roxanne screaming.someone attempts vanilla ice, but stuggles with the words so i take over and get confused my self so i end up doing a public enemy freestyle. which was nice. by the end of the night i had done nirvan smells like teen spirit and the proclaimers letter from america with paul. which we shall repaet on many more occations this holiday. eveyone manages to have a bit of a sing before we are thrown out of the area and we retreat to our rooms. good night