Hello once more,

Well the four of us have been clocking up the miles in our trusty campervans and it's been a hectic and fun old time.

We think we have found a new hobby: the sport of canyoning.

Canyoning involves getting dressed up in wetsuits, harnesses and helmets then navigating your way down a river/canyon by any means possible (abseiling, sliding, jumping and swimming). Our guide for this fun day out was an enthusiastic kiwi - Bronwyn - who would cheer our every manoeuvre with whoops of 'awesome' and 'yeah', whether our technique deserved it or not. The scariest moment was a 10 metre jump into a waterfall. This section was optional. Unfortunately Pete was first on this particular challenge and applied the logic that if Polly or Iain attempted the jump after he had opted out he'd never hear the end of it. So a deep breath and a leap of faith saw Pete hurl himself into the water below - survival! Unfortunately Polly now had to apply the same logic and had no choice but to follow - hurrah.

After much more jumping and sliding it was decided we needed something a little more sedate so we pointed our campervans south to Milford Sound (a huge fjord in the south of the South Island). Here we joined a sunset boat cruise around the fjord, the night was blissful and the Sound was majestic. Huge cliffs stretching up out the sea up to a mile high really was spectacular and the scale of it all pretty impressive.

Enough relaxing back to the adrenaline...

...Queenstown in New Zealand is famous as the home of bungee jumping something that has never really floated our collective boats. However when here we felt a certain obligation to pluck up the courage and go for it. For the previous couple of days there had been quite a bit of discussion over who should jump and from what height. Katie (Pete's sister) set the bar by throwing herself from a 35 metre high bridge. With the challenge set Pete and Iain thought they would go of a whopping 134 metre jump.

I cannot express how absolutely terrified Pete was. Stood strapped to a what is essentially a giant elastic band it is a battle between the conscious mind saying "look thousands of people have done this before, you're strapped in, it's perfectly safe" verses the part of your brain that has developed over centuries of largely successful evolution that says "never ever jump from high things. Ever. Ok. Never ever ever jump off high things". It was petrifying and frankly time to man up.

Iain was first up and surprised everyone by (in his own words) being a bit of a girl. "I can't do it I can't do it" will be a permanent quote of the holiday. But credit where, credit's due he overcame his fear and threw himself off.

Pete was up next and learning from Iain's mistakes, didn't look down and didn't cry like a girl. There was however a huge amount of screaming on the decent. Was it fun? No. Was it enjoyable? No. Are we strangely proud that we did it? Oh yes.