Well Good Morning to you all!

Now don't panic...but we may have just spent our first night in Christchurch Jail. But before I explain all that, let me give you a low down on possibly the longest journey we have ever taken.

Finally checking in at Heathrow on Wednesday evening we made our way to duty free (an airport must) and we enjoyed a scrummy yo sushi to fuel us for the long ride to Dubai-Sydney-Christchurch! Our first flight, amidst the screaming toddlers and being right bang next to the smelly loos Vick managed to sleep like a log, me on the other hand was luckier on the next flight! Our flight was 6.50 hours to Dubai Airport then 13.50 hours to Oz...we made the mistake of watching a scary film (probably didn't help the sleeping scenario) but we fiiiiiiiinally arrived in Sydney, Australia at 6am on Friday morning.

After a few hours wait and a couple of packets of crisps (yes at 6am) we boarded our last flight to NZ. You'd think it would be close to each other -you know you speak of NZ as if it like France and just across the sea. Nope. 3 hours later we arrived in Christchurch, and I'm not going to lie, it finally dawned on us just how far away, and just how long away from home we were going to be. But we refused to get home sick at that point and were very happy to meet very friendly Kiwi's at the airport who helped us find our hostel.

Now comes the part where I explain why we are in jail. Our hostel is actually a historic jail...the rooms are in ex cells (it sounds pretty freaky but it's actually pretty lush here). Both of us swore that it was probably in the top 5 best showers we have ever had. After 22 hours of flying and hours of waits in between you can imagine we smelt pretty bad. When I say bad I mean baby skunk like.

We made our way to the city's Westfield shopping center where we found a recommended pizza place - a welcome medicine after 2 days of traveling! Believe it or not our heads were on pillows by 8.00pm at night and we slept until 8.35am this morning (apart from the rude awakening of several Chinese people walking in and out of our dorm from the hours of 11-4am!

So that is our short story so far, and here I am sitting in the hostel before we head to pick up our campervan (aka the Britmobile). Today we are going to have a mosey around Christchurch before hitting the road to the middle of nowhere - a place called Arthurs Pass, situated in a National Park - have a look at Google images to get a rough idea of the scenery we are likely to get pretty bored of by the end of the month (it's a hard life I know).

There are apparently some good walkies there so we are going to have a stroll this afternoon then make camp at a camp site there tonight ( there are many so Parents please don't fret!). Then tomorrow we are going to head to Fox and Franz Joseph Glacier to again go on some pretty dramatic walks and camp there. Whats made us pretty excited is the hostel lady said there is pretty minimal light pollution so the stars are incredible. Then from there we are making our way down through the lakes and onto Queenstown (adrenaline junkie city). Not too sure about the internet situation before then so we will catch up with you all in a weeks time!

Lots of love,

Indie and Vick