Evening everybody,

We left Queenstown and headed back up and out to the West Coast via Haast to Fox Glacier. Whilst there we did a nice walk around a lake (but we;ve forgotten it's name). Then we did a 'Heli-Hike'!! This was amazing. It involved a small flight in a Helicopter up to the middle of the Fox Glacier. Here we landed on the ice, put on crampons and went to explore. We spent about 2 1/2 hrs on the glacier. We saw lots of cool ice caves, which we got to climb into. The views were brilliant on the way back down the glacier in the Helicopter again. No clouds, just lots of sunshine.

We left Fox that evening, driving up the coast via Franz Joseph. We had planned to take a leisurely drive along the famous Arthur's Pass, which crosses from the mountainous west coast to the low lying east coast. However, we didn't realise the 'Coast to Coast Race' was on that weekend. So we ended up driving the whole of it late into the night as ALL accommodation was full, including the crappy campsites. It was still a beautiful drive (when we could still see).

The next morning we headed up to Hanmer Springs. This is famous for its geothermal springs. We stayed in a nice campsite and visted the springs. There are lots of different pools with temps ranging from fresh water (30 C) to hot hot hot pools (40 C), but these stank of farts (sulphur). It was very relaxing but you couldn't stay in the hot ones for too long. The next morning the weather wasn't brilliant, so we played a great game of Crazy Golf and went round a maze.

Next we headed out onto the coast to visit Kaikoura. Here we wandered around the coast and watched all the seals. The waves were massive and very loud. Kaikoura is famous for Whale Watching but we thought we'd already indulged enough with the 'Heli-Hike'.

From Kaikoura we headed up to to the North to the Abel Tasman National Park. Here we did a really cool Sea Kayak along the Abel Tasman Great Walk. We kayaked from Kaiteriteri along to a place called the mad mile. It got a little bit to choppy here so we headed in to one of the many little sandy beaches for lunch. The wind picked up on our way back so we'd kayaked into it on the way out, it changed direction, so we had to kayak into on the way back as well. The views were stunning all the way. The next day we drove to Picton to catch the ferry and leave the South Island behind. Very sad, really enjoyed it.

Now we're in Wellington and are off out for our FIRST night out! Hopefully it won't rain.

Lots of love

Matt and Jo