RIVER VALLEY

We arrived in river valley on tuesday which just happened to be St. Patricks day another excuse for a guiness or two!! River Valley was awesome although it is the middle of nowhere, no town, village, not even a shop!! It was just a hostel on the really beautiful river with high mountain sides each side. The weather was awesome when we arrived after the 5 hour coach journey so we thought it would be fun to go for a swim. So we chcuked some trunks on and jumped on this zip line thing they had set up then jumped in to realise that it was mountain spring water and absolutely freezing but very refreshing! After our swim we went and got some food, the hostel put on a really good roast beef and yorkshire pud meal which definately tasted like home! We then hit the beers! And a few cans of guiness and a box of wine later we were singing songs and being very merry. We all met this very amusing scot called robbie and he taught us a very funny song about abraham and his seven sons, so that mixed with the irish national anthem and yogi bear we sang all night!! Was a really fun evening in the middle of nowhere and a great way to spend paddys day.

The next morning me sam and guy woke up early to go white water rafting all feeling a little crap from paddy's day! So after chucking on our various bits of white water rafting gear we headed up to the top of the river in a bus. Then me guy, sam and robbie were in the same boat with our very nice kiwi guide called dougie. He thought it would be funny to flip us at the first rapid so after that we were all wide awake and ready to go. We then rafted down the river for a further 3 hours hitting 18 grade five rapids which are the biggest ones you can do! Was a really good laugh. And i managed to do a couple of backflips off some rocks so was pretty happy as had never been able to do them before so i completed one of my gap year aims to learn to backflip. So that was white water rafting done and next we headed down on the coach to wellington.

WELLINGTON

We arrived in wellington quite late after river valley and because we were stuck in taupo for 6 days we only had time for one night and we were leaving early the next morning so we had to make sure we made the most of it. We stayed in the standard base hostel which was pretty rank and very busy! Anyways we went out for a nice meal and a few beers having the standard kiwi burger and export gold beer and usual! We then headed out to the base hostel basement, which seemed quite empty as i think people were al feeling a little rough from paddy's day! Shame really cos we had an awesome night which ended up in a little snooze in the corridor outside my room after meeting this random guy who for about 10 minutes i thought was sam but really wasnt so thats quite amusing! Then next morning was very dodgy! Having paid for our ferry ticket from the north to the south island we had to get on the bus but me and sam being in a diff room to slates and guy slept through all 12 alarms and were running down the highstreet half dressed trying to chase after out bus! Luckily he waited as slates had come to get us and we got on the bus 20mins late having almost missed it!! The ferry ride consisted of lots of sleeping but then as we headed into the malborough sound on the north island which was pretty awesome we took loads of photos.