Hello, sorry about the long delay in blog update, we have been very busy as you will see...

We had our flight to christchurch which was uneventful, apart from the fact that we were delayed by about an hour so the cabin crew gave us 1 complimentary beer. hooray. They weren't happy when we asked for our second. We headed for our booked hostel which was a short way out of christchurch in New Brighton...our brighton is better. The next day we made our way to the centre of Christchurch and checked into Base, our regular hostel chain. We did a bit of culture by checking out the cathedral which was next to our hostel. After we had quite a few beers Jamie had a KFC and a Macdonalds. Our last day in christchurch was spent hiring a car, looking at the river and playing pooh sticks, eating a curry and attending a toga party at the hostel. The curry house was next door to the hostel and as we sat down a fairly large group of people came who were clearly part of a cult. The women and men sat at different tables, the women all had long (probably unwashed) hair and wore traditional indian dress (although were not indian), and one guy ate nothing and played the flute throughout the meal. wierd.

Anyway, we picked up our car and drove down to Lake Tekapo. An incredibly scenic mountain lake with astounding views all around. We had a few beers in the only pub and decided to go star gazing with a box of wine. The stars were amazing, very bright. But it was getting cold, so we took our wine inside and Jamie and I played scrabble and after the box of wine was almost empty 'entertained' some other guests by playing the piano.

The next day we set out to Mt Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. This was sensational. There were several walks available, and we did 'Hooker Valley' which was a meandering path through the mountains up to Hooker Lake which had ice burgs on it. We then skimmed some stones at them. The other walk we did was up a mountain and was about an 1 hour going up hill. This was exhausting. Steps are rubbish. But the view was worth it. Hopefully if we can get pictures up they will be better than I can describe it.

After Mt Cook we drove down to Queenstown, the home of extreme sports and bungy jumps in New Zealand. The night we arrived we were so exhausted by the long drive (these towns are a good 4 or 5 hours apart) that we had to go to the bar straight away, and decide what to do. We decided to drive to Milford Sound which is a beautful fjord valley or something like that. There were a lot of waterfalls anyway. We did a 2 hour cruise and then came back again. The only problem was that it takes over 4 hours each way from Queenstown to Milford Sound. So it was a long day. However we did find a bar that served cocktails from teapots...which was nice.

We left Queenstown the morning after as it was raining and we awoke late so we couldn't do a bungy jump or anything exciting and we decided it would be better to push onto our next destination, which was another 6 hour drive up the coast to Franz Josef. This drive was fairly exciting as we went the wrong way at one point and ended up on a dirt track next to a cow, we drove up a mountain and got some snow, and we discovered that the "leaf" that was blown across the front of the car was in fact a small bird, whose remains we found mangled against the grill. We tried to poke him out with a stick, but we couldn't get enough purchase, so he's remained there ever since.

Franz Josef is the name of one of the biggest glaciers in New Zealand. We arrived at the hostel very tired and upon arriving at the nearest pub discovered that the All Blacks were playing Ireland. So everyone was very boisterous. We awoke late again and booked ourselves in for a half-day Glacier walking tour. This was fantastic. About 30 of us were kitted out in boots, coats, gloves, hats etc and were taken to the glacier. We hiked through forest, over rocks and through rivers and got to the foot of the ice. We then put our 'crampons' (spikes) on our boots and spent about 2 hours on the ice. It was brilliant.

Today we have tired legs. However are overjoyed as we have driven to a town called Greymouth and have booked a brewery tour with bbq. Amazing.

See you soon.

JDJS