Drove on today (Wednesday 15th February) to Takaka and onto Farewell Split and did a short walk along the sandbank on the east side, over the dunes and back along the sandbank on the west side.

On Monday we did the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, thankfully this one was mostly flat with just the odd gradient.This was labelled as a 4 hour walk one way but at Richards and Takako's pace we got there, ate our lunch and walked back in around 6 hours.Everyone was tired by the time we got back though, so the next day we just travelled a bit further looking at the sites on the way.

Headed up to Abel Tasman with Richard and Takako.We stopped at and did a walk that took us over the top of Mt Lodestone, this was a hard walk made harder as they walk faster than us so we went at their pace.The walk was so steep in parts you had to scramble up the track using your hands to help you climb up.The view at the top was spoiled by the cloud that had descended which was a shame as I think the view would have been really good.We lost the track a few time...

Travelled quite quickly through Franz just stopping to walk up to the glacier.Stopped for the night in Hokitika and stayed at a hostel run by someone I was in school with, so spent the evening chatting.Left Hokitika and travelled on to Greymouth, just stopping to pop in and visit Kev, another person we knew from the Wales but who moved here about 8 years ago.Moved on from Greymouth and stopped again to see the pancake rocks as last time we past them it was rainin...

Leaving Fox today (07/02/2012) but not before doing a 16,000 feet skydive.It took around 20 minutes to get to 16,000 feet and after reaching 12,000 I had to wear an oxygen mask for the final 4,000 feet.The views from the skydive were amazing from 16,000 feet.Being this high I was above the clouds so could see the top of Mount Cook and the alps range crystal clear above the clouds, then it took about 10 seconds to free fall through the cloud when I could see nothi...