We flew into Christchurch on the South Island, a town more English than England, and pretty much immediately headed away! We had a 'Juicy Crib' campervan on hire for 2 days (aka a people carrier with a double bed and outragous paint scheme) and headed for Mount Cook, camping at a lake at the base of Mt Cook. The lake looks like it is filled with turquoise paint due to the minerals dissolved in the water. We drove to Mount Cook with its snowy peaks, and then moved on to Dunedin for a tour of Mr Cadbury's chocolate factory. Good tour, rubbish chocolate bars, although we got to see 1 ton of 8 month old chocolate falling from 8 floors high.

We moved on to Queenstown and stopped at a bungy jump site. We were more scared by the $160 cost for a jump than a jump itself and so watched as others (including an entire Indian family) dived, jumped, tumbled, quivered, hesitated and refused to jump. A great spectator sport, and all shown on large TVs as well to catch all the drama.

We arrived in Queenstown to find something that looked like a ski village with freezing temperatures but no snow. We were grateful as we had no warm clothes. The next day it snowed....so we treated ourselves to wooly hats each and went on the Shotover Jet, a boat that works in 10cm deep water and zips along canyons next to the walls at super fast speeds. Realising that Queenstown was going to stay super chilled, we retired early back to the warmer (only just) Christchurch for a spot of tourist visits and a flight to the warmer still North Island.

We also struck gold while gold panning in a very cold river. Could just be rocks though??

xx