We have arrived in Invercargill! We got a lift from Maree to the airport and flew in to Queenstown which was incredible. We saw so many mountains with loads of snow. We landed and it was freezing! Carrie picked us up from the airport and she is so so nice! The drive was just over 2 hours and we saw so many beautiful places. We got to the house and met both the dogs who are adorable! The house is incredible it's so Christmassy and the Christmas tree is up! Yay. Throughout the whole house is dark wood it's amazing and they have a lovely garden with a massive BBQ. We spent the evening with Carrie and her friend they got drunk and so did Tom haha. She has a son called Beckley and he's really cute and started crying because he wet himself. Today we took a walk around and they have an amazing park 5 minutes walk away. Tom had got a chicken pie and bacon from the supermarket... He's just gone to look for them and it has disappeared. He went out in the garden and the puppy had eaten it all!! Tom decided to drink with Hamish (carries husband) beer after beer after beer! I was only drinking water so I was watching Tom get more and more drunk! He was such a stateeeee! He woke up the next morning with a massive hangover he was like a big baby. The next day he finally started feeling okay and we took a walk around and went in to a place called liquor land to see what we might want to get for Christmas. A guy came over and said you have to try this.... We had to do a shot of something vile! Poor Tom was so hungover he just had to be brave. We got a picnic and spent the afternoon in a lovely park. They got us a Christmas card and a bottle of wine which was really sweet. They have now gone away so we have the whole place to ourselves which is so nice. We went to the Sunday market we were both so excited to go. We got there and it was inside a large building we walked in and random people were singing. Everyone was trying to make eye contact they were all so weird I stood behind Tom and we moved quickly in a circle and headed for the exit! We took the dogs to a doggy park which they loved! Even provided it's own poop bags it was brilliant! Today Hamish's mum popped round, she baked us banana, caramel and chocolate muffins and also had loads of home grown vegetables for us she's so adorable! Floyd has made a massive hole in the hot house noooo! We've had to tape it up, we are hoping its a one off! We went to her house which was incredible, she grows literally everything in her garden. She has a little dog called Molly who is so cute and lovely. They had a massive pizza oven outside and bath tubs made in to seats!
We took the dogs to the vets today so they could get the vaccinations! We were a little worried but they were so good and so well behaved made it so much easier. We then took them for a long walk and they met another 10 dogs it was so cute watching them all play together. We met a lady called Brenda who was born in Brighton! Such a small world, she gave me her phone number and said she might need her dog looking after! We went to sues and picked strawberries they were delicious. We went to Queens Park and they had a massive reindeer and lots of other animals. Today we went to Oreti Beach, Tom got to drive along to beach which was different. Today we took a road trip as it was pure sunshine it's so weird as its December it doesn't feel right. We drove two hours to The Catlins. It has lots of beaches and bays. We pulled in to one and had a walk around and saw three sea lions. They were so incredible, we couldn't believe we were able to get so close. We then drove to a massive beach which was beautiful and sat down, relaxed and read books. We just had a delivery! Maree ( the lady we stayed with in Whangarei ) has ordered us a Christmas hamper with loads of Christmas food! We can't actually believe it! We cannot believe it's nearly Christmas! We've been baking and cooking so much yummy food. We ate far tooooo much on Christmas Eve! Christmas morning I Skyped some of the girls and mummy. The morning went so quickly. We then watched Elf and put our Santa hats on! We started cooking the dinner praying everything was going to time out right. It all did it was incredible! Everything was so yummy. I even made a banoffee pie which was delicious! Whilst we were cooking we were both sweating sooo much as it was so hot and humid outside it wasn't attractive! No wonder they all have bbqs over here it's to hot to cook a roast dinner! We then relaxed with some wine and watched The Grinch and Christmas Carol. Yesterday we had one of the best days of our travels. We took a road trip to Manapouri, Te Anau and Milford Sound. The drive was incredible I can't even explain how pretty everywhere was. We drove through snowy mountains to massive blue lakes and waterfalls. We drove through a tunnel which was built in a mountain! We walked up a mountain and played in the snow which was crazy. I fell over four times! We took another road trip and visited Queenstown, Otago and Wanaka. The views were incredible again. We saw mountains that were set in The Lord of the Rings. We fell in love with Wanaka and walked through the little town. Queenstown was nice but it was so busy and we got stuck in traffic for ages. We went round to Sue and Bobs house for pizza. He's an engineer so he's built a massive fire place in the garden with a pizza oven. It was incredible, it tasted so so nice! It's gone so quickly here we can't believe it's time to go. We booked our bus from Invercargill to Dunedin which arrived at 9.45am on time we arrived at the airport at 12.45. Our flight doesn't depart until 8.05pm so we had a long wait! Around 6ish we heard someone mention a 15 minute delay which we were fine about. From then on it only got worse and worse. It went from a 15 minute delay to a 3 hour delay. They then offered us food vouchers until eventually we heard the flight was cancelled! We thought we were screwed until we went downstairs and they said they will pay for a shuttle to a hotel and back to the airport in the morning! We couldn't believe it, we thought we would be sleeping on the airport floor. We got to the hotel and it was a 4* hotel we couldn't believe it! It was incredible, we walked around in robes! Haha we had the best night sleep and then we woke up and had our free breakfast buffet which was amazing! We are now sitting at the airport hoping a flight turns up!