Merry Christmas everybody. Hope santa brought you everthing you wanted. He even found us some how. Must of been the sign i made!!!!

Anyway last time we left you in suspense of our last activity. This week we have been trying to fly again. Except this time there was no parachute involved, just a piece of elastic band. There are 3 different bungy jumps in queenstown, one is off a bridge 43 metres high (134 feet for the oldies), the second is only a small one but high up above queenstown, and the third is 134 metres high (440 feet), suspened between to mountains 8.5 seconds of free fall. I bet you can guess which one we decided to do!!!! That's right, the biggest and scariest.

The good thing is you pay to do it before you see the height of it and there are no refunds. So we both payed the day before knowing the only way to back out was to lose the cash we had already paid with, which we didnt want to do. That night i dont think we slept very well (we were very excited obviously), or if facing up to the truth sh**ing ourselves!!!!

The journey began in the morning with a 40 minute dive up the mountain, which made the anticipation even worse. On arrival we realised just how high it was. Hayley didnt want to look over the edge, she was being hardcore and was just gonna jump!! or just too scared to look. You get harnessed up, and then your off in to a little cable car that takes you out to a little pod in the middle of the canyon. At this point you have no choice in realising how high above the river you are. To put it into perspective blackpool tower is 158 metres high, the viewing deck is 122 metres so it is somewhere in between.

When you get to the pod the bungys are organised in weight order. So as soon as we got in they had called my name and was strapping me up, i had no time to think or get worked up. Haylz on the other hand being the fatty she is was last, so had lots of time to get worked up. before i knew it i was shuffling to the edge, looking at a camara, they count to 3 and before you no it you have jumped. You dont have much time to think when you are falling and the ground is coming at you very fast, it was the madest rush of my life it even forced a little man scream out of me it was that scary. once it was all over and back in the pod I couldn't really talk to haylz i was rushing the much, i think the only thing i said was 'oh its mad' I might have even had i couple of small naughty words in there as well.

Over to haylz for her experience of it: My turn came and unlike Ian I was so confident I couldn't believe it!!! After being sat in the chair and being attached to the bungy cord it was my turn. Like Ian said before you know you're shuffling to the edge of a tiny ledge and told to look up at a camera (and a sneaky look down to the river below I thought to myself this is easy!), then 3,2,1 and the guy that's holding onto the back of you lets you go and you jump!!!!!!! It's all over pretty quick and you're left dangling at the bottom of an elastic cord thinking what have I just done. The only thing I did when I got back into the pod was go to Ian for a cuddle, I didn't know what to do with myself and I said there and then that was the scariest thing I've ever done and it was a once in a life time thing-I'm not doing that jump ever again (maybe one a little bit smaller next time!!!).

On the christmas front, christmas eve came and we honoured the family traditions of having a good old buffet, only ours was a bit more up market with a bottle of champagne to help us get into the christmas spirit!!! Christmas Day came and some how Santa had found the van!!!!!! To our surprise we had presents waiting for us around our christmas tree! After present opening and phone calls home we got ready and started celebrations early in a local bar that was holding christmas day lunch for orphans. Although it was nothing like our mums dinners it was still good and enough to fill 200 hungry backpackers. We were entertained by a local Mauri group who scared us by doing the Haka and then Santa came round and passed out present-Ian got a Carlsberg football which I thought was a fantastic present after opening mine which was a cap with "Mount Gay Rum" across the front!!!!!!!!! After hearing my big bro was wondering where his xmas present was he should be expecting a very attractive cap in the next couple of weeks!!! After drinking shots from a teapot and few more beers we finished off christmas day in the old Burnley way and went for a kebab on our way back to the van!

Setting off to Christchurch tomorrow for New Years, hope everyone has had a fantastic christmas and that you all have an even better New Year!!!!

Loads of love xxxxxx

p.s VAN meal update. Over here Heinz is called Watties. The packaging and everything is exactly the same just a different name, so we thought. After weeks of eating the soup, complaining how salty and thick they are compared to back home, we realised on the front in tiny letters it says 'condensed'! After reading the back of the package we realised that you are supposed to add a full can of water also to the soup. Bloody New Zealand soup, how were we supposed to know to add water!!!! OPPS!!! After trying it with water, the soup is now much nicer!!!! ha ha ha.

xxx