Kia ora!

We havent blogged for ages so this might take awhile! Earth quakes, a brush with the law and a city stright out of an apocolypes movie...

We left Hokitika last week and headed south towards Franz Josef, a glacier village in the mountains. On the way we stopped at Okorito lagoon. We intended to go for a gentle kayak for an hour but got talked into doing a three hour trip down a river that nearly killed us on the way back as the tide was coming in. Nicest people in the world though, gave us tea and sympathy!

After recovering, we went to Franz and Fox glaciers, massively impressive. The next day we drove to a little town called Kingston, a stopover on the way to millford sound. Treated ourselves to a cabin and a hot shower as it was too miserable to camp. The first thing the grumpy Yorkshire campsite owner said was 's***ty day' and it had been thanks to a bored copper who decided to pull us over and fine us for speeding.

We travelled to Milford Sound the next day which has to be one of the best drives in the world; mountains, snow, jungle, a waterfall chasm and the only alpine parrots in the world. Milford itself was beautiful, huge rocks sticking out of the sound.

We then went on to Christchurch for two days. We had asked around about whether it was ok to visit after the earthquake in Febuary and people said it was, that they were coping and getting back to normal.... We were still massively shocked at how devasted the city had been. The entire city centre was a red zone that could'nt be entered, you could just see in through the fences to shops, bars and restaurants that had either been left on the morning of the quake and not been re-entered as they were unstable or they had collapsed completely. There was rubble everywhere and loads of old colonial buildings and churches that had been levelled. Streets around the city were deserted except for builders and the residential streets were full of houses that were empty as they weren't safe. Our hostel had a sign up saying 'excuse the cracks in the walls, the house will not fall down!' and we felt a bit guilty for making it one of our stops when it had been pretty much destroyed. There was nothing open except for a line of makeshift shops built out of ship containers and we found a good bar made out of the same containers on our last night. It was pretty full so people are obviously getting on with everything. It was a sad and humbling experience really although we're glad we went.

We left Christchurch and headed to Hamner springs, an alpine villiage with hot springs and a good brewery where they were showing a charity boxing event that had rugby league players fighting rugby union players. It was obviously a huge thing here as the prime minister was commentating - had a really good night and if you want to see a good amatuer boxing match, google hayley holt vs Paige Hereb, it was brutal!

We travelled to Picton yesterday to catch the ferry this morning and woke up in the middle of a 5.7 earthquake which was pretty scary. No damage though.

On our way back to Auckland now to get ready for our flight to Sydney on Friday!

See you there.