Kia Ora,

After our Whale watching boat trip, we headed to Motueka. From there we went tramping (walking) at Abel Tasman National Park. It was V.beautiful with mountainous rain forest and crystal clear ocean. It was a nightmare driving there as the roads are very windy. We saw a cool waterfall and some birds that prentended they couldnt fly to lure us away from their nest.

The next day we headed to Fanz Josef, on our way there we stopped off at the pancake rocks. We arrived in Franz Josef and booked a glacier walk for the next day but when we woke up in the morning, it was chucking it down with rain so we rescheduled for the following day. As it was raining we went to a wildlife centre to see the infamous Kiwi bird. There was actually only two there, bit of a anitclimax but still pretty cool. The weather was much better the next day so we went down to meet out guide and got our equipment. We had to walk 45 mins through the forest to get to the base of the glacier then another 20 mins uphill to get to the ice. Just before we got to the ice, we put our crampons on our boots and we were ready to walk on the ice. We walked around the very impressive ice formations for about 2 hours, despite being surrounded by ice, it wasnt actually that cold. We crawled through a tunnel. walked trough some enormous cravasses, over ice that was only a few inches thick and up and down steps that were cut out by our guide. It was really cool just standing on such a massive force of nature. It would be cool to go right to the top but that takes around 3 - 4 days to get up there! It takes something like a hundred years for a snowflake that falls at the top to make its way down and come out at the bottom as water. We had a really good day.

The next day we headed to Wanaka, this is where we were suppossed to be skiing but there is no bloody snow! We went to the puzzle world and spent a few hours being tricked.

We are now in Quenstown and today we went on a jet boat, down the shotover river. We past the remarkables mountain range - again no snow! We got up to speeds of 60 mph and in water 2 inches deep! At times it was so fast, we struggled keeping our eyes open. It was alot of fun.
Tomorrow we are going ice skating and then in the evenning we are going to the minus 5 ice bar - everything is ice. It will be very cool - no pun intended.

J&R
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