What a day!

First off it had finally stopped raining!!! As I ate my breakfast there was beautiful blue sky over the beautiful Lake Tekapo. Was a gorgeous sunny day - so I never expected to have to scrape ice off the car before I could head out!!

Since I wasn't going to have time to go see the glaciers I'd decided to book a one hour flight over them instead, and it looked like I'd picked a good day for it. I drove the short way out to the airport and the guy confirmed we were on for flying - in fact he said the conditions were best they'd had in weeks & every bit as good as a summers day with no wind, no clouds just bright sunshine - but with the added bonus there was snow on the mountains which you wouldn't get in summer! There are some advantages to holidaying in winter afterall!!

The plane was a small 14 seater twin prop nomad (for the plane spotters amongst you). We flew over the lakes, through the mountains & over the glaciers. As you might expect the views were stunning, and with no clouds I could see all the way to the west coast as we circled the Franz Josef glacier. We also went round Mount Cook and I learnt the bright turquoise/blue colour of the lakes is because of the chalk deposits created by the glaciers, and as the ice melts, 1m a day of it flows downstream as ice/ice bergs & eventually a river. So stunning, would def recommend it if you're ever in the area! Will post the pics when I have better wifi, they don't really do it justice but are probably good enough to make you all jealous!!

From there I went to a look out point on the lake at the St. John's observatory, the view from up there was equally stunning, you just couldn't see as much!

I then made my way back to queenstown, driving through the hills & mountains & past the lakes I'd earlier flown over. With the blue sky instead of the clouds I drove through yesterday the views were fabulous, long straight roads and twisty turny ones past fields of sheep and hills of trees.

And I also stopped at the kawarau bridge again, and for the 2nd time today I was soon flying through the air, this time on a zip wire thing where you fly head first for around 130m at at around 60km ph!!

The most scary part though was as they strapped me up, standing so close to the ledge then having to take my feet off the ground and just dangle there was v scary!!! The actual flying bit was fun - I will try upload the film when I have better wifi too because it is quite funny! I'd been so focused on first part I'd not thought about how I get back once i'd flown from one end to the other!!

Once safely back on the ground I drove on and returned to Queenstown around 5. There was now snow on the hills around the lake that was not there less than a week ago!! And it's now only 6oC whereas last week it was 16oC!! Brrrrrrr!

Tonight is my last night in South Island, back to the boy in the north tomorrow, though I might try fit in a bit more sightseeing first - just in case I've not seen enough lakes & mountains yet!!