Kia Ora,

On Thursday morning Pete went jet boating through the Shotover Canyons. Hol didn't fancy it much though so took a rain check and made progress uploading some photo's instead. The Jetboating was ace, spins within the canyons and flying past rocks with only inches to spare. The river was snow melt so very cold and quite fast flowing but shallow. Some of the shallow parts didn't seem deep enough for a kayak let alone a powerful boat with 12 people on! In the afternoon we went for a mooch around Queenstown, it's a pretty little alpine town with funky cafe's and bars everywhere. We both got a much needed haircut, the first since our Thai experience... this time Pete got a professional barber so thankfully there was no need for emergency clippers! After mooching around the town we went mad and went out for a meal - there was a beautiful restaurant next to the lake with a mountain backdrop view. It was a lovely chilled out day and we made our way back to the campsite just before it started to rain!

On Friday we drove to Wanaka through Arrowtown, an old gold mining town. It was a very pretty town but there wasn't heaps to do so we passed through before stopping to watch some people bungy jumping at the bridge where it all started, we weren't convinced though so carried on our way to Wanaka. When we arrived there we went to Stuart Lansbroughs 'Puzzling World' and spent the afternoon boggling our brains and playing in the 1.5km maze! We had a look around the town a bit and checked out the scenic views over the lake with snow capped mountains for a backdrop. We found a DOC campsite by the head of Lake Wanaka in the evening, it was an amazing pitch again with a view over the lake and into the mountains. We got invaded by the ''flying kiwi' bus a bit later but we didn't mind as they invited us to join them by there campfire for a drink! It got really windy that night but fortunately our Spaceship and tent stayed attached. :-)

On Saturday we started the long drive to Fox Glacier. It's only about 40km from where we had stayed at Mount Cook but the other side of the mountains and about 250km by road! It was absolutely chucking it down with rain but we were in the car most of the day so it was okay! We stopped at the blue pools, but they were flooded so they weren't very blue. We carried on driving to Thunder Creek Falls which was amazing because of the heavy rainfall, it was pouring down the mountain face. We decided that waterfalls were a good thing to view in the rain so we stopped at a few more along the way and they were all quite impressive. We spent the day admiring the glacier rivers and mountains, and just generally chillaxing. We stopped at Haast Pass which was pretty cool too, it was like a white water rapid, the sound of the water was defeaning! When we arrived in Fox township we found a campsite and caught up with the Aus photo upload before calling it a night.

On Sunday we got up fairly early and went to Lake Mattheson (Mirror Lakes). We only planned a short walk but ended up walking the whole circuit as the lake was so pretty. 90 minutes later we returned to the van and had a picnic lunch by the lake before heading to meet our tour group for the Fox Glacier walk that we were doing that afternoon. We got kitted out and began the trip with a short bus journey in an old Bedford bus. When we arrived we walked for about two hours up the rainforest mountain-front steps traversing across narrow cliff faces before we finally arrived at the beast. We put on our crampons and trotted around the amazing glacier for an hour or so, learning about the geology, how it was formed and the impact on locals and tourism before we started the long trek down - which went much quicker than the one up! We were both pretty shattered from the 6 hours walking so we drove to Franz Josef township, grabbed some pub-grub and hit the sack.

On Monday we had a mooch around Franz Josef in the morning. We were hoping to have a helicopter flight over the glacier there but the cloud is really low at this time of year and we'd been told we wouldn't see much even if they did take the chopper up, it was a particularly bad day for weather so we called a rain-check and drove on to Westport at the top of the West Coast. Before we left though we watched a 20minute 'Helimax' film about the amazing West Coast which was a nice way to summarise our memories. We stopped at the Pancake rocks which were cool - a formation of rocks that look like pancakes stacked high! We also stopped to view a seal colony basking around on the rocks! We passed through two local towns, Hokitika and Greymouth before finally arriving in Westport for the evening.

On Tuesday we began the long drive (5 hours) back from the west coast to the east coast. We left quite early in the morning so we arrived in Kaikora early afternoon after travelling through the most beautiful scenery - mountains and rugged hills, along winding country roads on a lovely sunny day! We arrived in Kaikora town and had a mooch around. It's a stunning little coastal town and the locals are really friendly! We booked a seal kayaking tour then headed out of town a little to find a campsite we'd passed. We checked in and it turned out to be one of the best camp-sites yet, we had a beach front pitch and there was a zip-line and big playground too! We chilled out, enjoyed the sunshine and scenery, grabbed dinner and got some sleep.

On Wednesday we had a mooch around town before heading off to meet the seal kayaking man. We hopped into his van and drove around the corner to a sheltered bay where we got kitted up and hit the water. The kayaks were a bit different to what we're both used to as they're sea kayaks so much longer and with a rudder, but we soon picked it up and headed towards some rocks in search of seals. We found some pretty soon, a smart-arse cheeky chap doing handstands in the sea just feet from our boats! He was swimming under and around our kayaks just popping up to make his presence known every now and then. The rocks were littered with big male seals lounging around which was quite scary as they have huge teeth but impressive nonetheless. We paddled out to sea a bit and around the corner to find more seals loafing around the rocks. It's a cosy life being a seal eh?! The day went really quickly and before we knew it, it was time to head home. We paddled back and returned the kayaks before being taken back to our van. We started driving north in the afternoon, when we saw a sign for a seal colony so we stopped to have a mooch. There were hundreds of seals just loafing around everywhere!! It was by far the biggest seal colony we've seen in the south island - it was amazing. We got back on the road and started the long drive along the coast to Blenheim where we kipped for the night, it was a seal-tastic day!

On Thursday after stocking up on some supplies and getting our Christmas tree for our van (we need something to remind us its nearly chistmas, it being like summer out) we spent a long time on the road again as we'd decided to go to Abel Tasman. We stopped at Nelson for a look around. It was one of the bigger towns we've seen since being here, and various other lookouts along the way. The views were stunning, huge valleys with streams pouring through them, surrounded by giant hills covered in lush greenery. We reached our campsite right on Pohara beach quite late in the evening, we had dinner and relaxed.

Friday was a rest day, the first we've had since Perth - 5 weeks ago! We laid in, lounged around all day just enjoying the sunshine and playing on the beach before finally giving the van a bit of a clean up and going to bed. The weather changed in the afternoon to being really windy and quite cold. It was mad how quickly it changed, literally moments in between. Nethertheless it was lovely just to have a lazy day - we both really needed it.

On Saturday we'd planned on seeing some more of Abel Tasman and going land sailing on the beach but the weather was awful and most things there are only accessible by hiking / boat. We gave in to the wind and rain and headed back towards Picton. We decided to make the most of a bad day and jumped on a ferry to cross over to the North Island a day earlier than planned! In total, Pete drove 3717km's in the South Island - not bad for just under 3 weeks!

See you on the North Island.

That's all folks!

Hol and Pete

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