Hello! Sorry again for the long silence - I am still here! However, one of the girls in my group has just updated her blog for the first time in almost a month - so you should count yourselves lucky really..... :-p

Having finally managed to get some photos up, I've had some complaints that some of them are the wrong way round. I am aware of this and will try and get it sorted asap. Because I am uploading directly from my memory card I am reluctant to change the originals in case something goes wrong - so to fix this I will have to save them to the hard-drive of a computer, edit them, then upload them, so this may take a while!

Anyway - what have I been up to in the past week and a bit I hear you ask? Well, I've actually been to the very bottom and the very top of New Zealand! Last time I wrote I was just about to head off on the "Bottom Bus". The first day we did a wildlife tour on the Otago Peninsula, which was brilliant. We saw fur seals, dusky dolphins, sealions, albatross and penguins! A group of us then hopped off the bus and spent a few days in Dunedin, just pottering round the town and doing nothing :-)

We then spent a day exploring the Catlins where we saw some more penguins, fur seals, sealions and dolphins (Hector ones this time), before heading down to Invercargill, New Zealand's southernmost city, for the night. We spent the next day in Te Anau, which was really beautiful and then went up to Milford Sounds.

Milford Sounds (which is apparently a fiord, not a sounds) was absolutely stunning. We were really lucky with the weather - apparently the previous few groups had had rain and clouds, whereas we had blue skies and sunshine! We cruised down the sounds, passing lots of waterfalls and mountains and other beautiful things, then stopped off at the underwater observatory on the way back. The underwater observatory was built to give non-divers the experience of diving, and we had some great views of some of the marine life - lots of starfish, anemones and some rare black coral (which is actually white....). Given the stunning weather a small group of us decided to take the opportunity to fly back to Queenstown rather than take the bus - which was definitely worth it! We flew back over the sounds and then over mountains, lakes and valleys which are un-accessible to people who see the sounds by road/boat - absolutely stunning.

From Queenstown we headed to Christchurch and then up to Kaikoura - another very beautiful town on the east coast of New Zealand. Here, having seen so many NZ fur seals lazing around on the rocks, we had a chance to go swimming with them! This was brilliant fun, the seals are so playful, and once they had decided that we weren't a threat they were swimming all round us and showing off with their underwater acrobatics!

I then said goodbye to the South Island and headed back up to Auckland for the final bit of my NZ adventure - the Bay of Islands. Unfortunately the weather was overcast and miserable, so we weren't really able to appreciate the gorgeous beaches boasted by NZ's tip-top bit. However, we did get a chance to go out into the bay on a boat and see some of the many bottlenose dolphins which pass through each day. Sadly we weren't able to swim with them as they had too many young, but they were great fun to watch and put on a fab show!

So, I've finally come to the end of my time in NZ! I can't believe how quickly it's gone by. This afternoon I fly out to Thailand, which is where I'll be spending Christmas. My plans for my time in Thailand are very fluid at the moment - so if anyone has any tips on where to go/what to see than please let me know! I've already had a few ideas from people I've met in NZ who have already been, but any more are definitely welcome :-)

I'll try to write again before Christmas, but if I don't manage it I hope you all have a great one. Lots of love,

xxx