gondola rides, crater walks, Cecil Beaton and a helluva lot of time on the road!! Oh and the new Charlie Dimmock! so we caught the ferry down to the south island at like stupid o'clock in the morning and spent half the day crashed out in the van by the side of the road!! ah the joys of Nozmo!! finally after a few good hours of kip we set of down the eatsern coastal road towards Christchurch, after a few detours around Blenheim to get snow chains and gummie boots we carried on down to Kaikoura, for a spot of lunch then onto Christchurch itself. The drive down the coast was amazing - imagine the most beautiful emerald sea and huge mountains with a road just hap-hazardly plonked in the middle of the two!!!! We got into to Christchurch pretty late so found oursleves a nice little road to have a kip and settled in for another evening of Dvd watching and pasta based nutrition!!! yum yum!! The next day we met up with a friend of Amb and Holly's from Gilly and got stuck in some some serious touristy action!! we headed up the Gondola jsut outside of town and wnet for what we though would be a little walk around the summit that actually turned out to be a hardcore trek across the crater!!! And we weren't even wearing our wellies!!!!! After a quick brew in the car park we headed out to find a Maori centre that was supposed to be nearby however our map totally lied to us and we just drove around for a while in circles!!! who said I don't have a good sense of direction eh??? Anyway after that slight mishap i managed to drag the crew along to the Christchurch Art Gallery to the Cecil Beaton exhibition, the gallery was wicked - well at least I thought so the others just seemed to sit around commenting about how much i was turning into Charlie Dimmock - fair enough i was wearing wellies but the rest was unfounded!!! That night we escaped from the van for the first time and actually went out!!!! crazy days! got drunk and watched rugby in a loud brash irish pub - t'was ace!! The next day - all with slightly fuzzy vodka heads we got on the road and headed for Queenstown!!! bring on the snow!!!!! xxxx Charlie Dimmock # 2