On Monday 20 April I had to be up at 5.30am to get my shuttle bus to the airport for my flight to New Zealand. My first flight to Auckland was 3 hours long, and a good flight there. Was pleasantly surprised to find that we had our own tv screens so I passed the time by watching Will Smith’s movie Seven Pounds. Got to Auckland and decided to make my way straight to the domestic terminal for my flight to Christchurch that evening. Couldn’t find where the shuttle bus went from so decided to walk it. It said it only took 12 minutes, but it felt more like 12 miles, I was nearly dying by the time I’d lugged all my bags to the other terminal! Got myself checked in (literally, you do it all yourself) and went to the boarding gate about 2 hours too early, but I passed the time easily enough. The flight to Christchurch was just an hour long, and the first thing I noticed once I got there was how freezing it was, it was only 8 degrees! Was a bit of a shock after being in Australia for so long. Got my shuttle bus fine and arrived at the Bealey’s hotel at about 8.30pm. The lady at reception was great and put me in the room where I would be quad sharing on Wednesday night before the tour, had a double bed to myself and it was great to have a bit of me time and have a room to myself for a couple of days before the madness of Contiki started again!

Thursday 23rd April
Contiki Grand Explorer
Day 1

Today was the first day of our Contiki New Zealand trip. Saw a few of the new people at the pre tour meeting on Wednesday night, but didn’t really get chatting to anyone new until Amy and I went to dinner with 2 girls called Jenny and Ann and a guy called Ciao from Brazil. Today we were up bright and early as usual on Contiki! And we travelled through MacKenzie country, we started to get our first taste of New Zealand scenery, it is so beautiful and picturesque here, you can’t even compare it to Australia because the two places are just so different, great in separate ways, but I think NZ wins hands down on the scenic side really. We then went to see Lake Tekapo which is a massive lake that is this pure milky blue colour due to the rocks and sand underneath. Sometimes you can’t really believe what you are seeing because it looks like it has come straight from a postcard. After our stop here we had a lunch stop at a place called Geraldine which is famous for making the world’s biggest woolly jumper apparently, before we headed on out to Lake Ohau where we would be staying in a lodge that night. It was such a breathtaking view of the mountains and the lake, unbelievable really. Started to get to know some of the new people tonight, had dinner and then Amy and I went into the hot tub underneath the stars for a while, which was great as the weather was so cold! Went to bed earlyish just to keep warm really as well as being tired.

Friday 24th April – Day 2

This morning we left Lake Ohau to head on out to Milford Sound and our overnight cruise. This would be one of our longest days driving, we had to do about 9 hours, but it was broken up quite well with stops here and there. We went to pick up three new people at Queenstown airport and had our lunch stop at a beautiful little town called Te Anau. In the afternoon we stopped at a place called the Chasm which was very picturesque and also a big grassy plain where Sarah our tour guide encouraged us to do some frolicking ala Sound of the Music stylee which was quite fun! We then headed on to Milfound Sound and drove through the Homer Tunnel, it was quite something once you got to the other side, especially which all the atmospheric music that they were playing on the bus! We boarded the Milford Wanderer which was going to be our home for the night and set sail almost immediately. We put our bags in our rooms, which were 4 bunk beds to a small room with a curtain covering the entrance. After this we had the opportunity to do either kayaking, swimming or a ride on the tentercraft boat. I thought it was a bit too cold to be swimming and was put off the kayaking once I saw a guy from our tour fall in fully clothed, so decided to go on the boat, which was really interesting and we found out loads of good stuff such as that Milford Sound shouldn’t really be called a Sound as it was carved by ice action, so it should really be Milford Fjord, but early explorers got it wrong and the name stuck. We had a lovely dinner of braised beef, potatoes and veg, followed by yummy fruit pie, before a few of us had a game of Cranium before hitting the sack. Had the worst night’s sleep though, as we had to decide what optionals we wanted to do and book them in pretty quickly, and I decided for some unknown reason to do a 12,000ft sky dive!! A couple of the other girls from my Aus tour were doing one, so I decided to put it down, and then I couldn’t sleep very well because I kept envisioning falling out of the plane and the parachute not opening, or falling out of the harness or something stupid like that, was really getting myself worked up about it, before managing to fall asleep at 2.30am after deciding to try and cancel it the following morning.

Saturday 25th April – Day 3

Woke up nice and early this morning at 6.30am, after the ship put Smeagol from the Lord of the Ring’s films on loud speaker saying ‘Wake up sleepies!’ quite scary when you’re still half asleep! Tried to see Sarah as early as I could to talk to her about cancelling the sky dive, but she managed to talk me back into it by reassuring me that I was having irrational fears and that what I was worried about didn’t really have a chance of happening as they wouldn’t have a business if it did etc. After we had had a hot breakfast on the ship, we sailed a bit out into the Tasman sea, which was quite choppy and cold. We then sailed back to the wharf . When we got back on to the coach we had a drive back to Te Anau which was our lunch stop again today, before we went and had an ice cream stop at a beautiful little town called Arrowtown. It was here that they filmed the scene in the Lord of the Ring’s film where Arwan is trying to get Frodo to safety and they are riding on horses in the river, although I think they must have super imposed the river or something as it was so much smaller than on the film! After we left Arrowntown, we started making our way to Queenstown Lodge where we would be spending the next 3 nights. We had our group photo shot before checking in, which I was kinda hoping we wouldn’t as I looked minging but never mind. Got checked into the hotel and then we all got ready to go to our buffet meal at the Skyline tower restaurant. It was a lovely gondola ride up, and Queenstown looked pretty all lit up in the dark. Had some great foot at the restaurant, and tried to get my money’s worth. Went back to the hotel after this as we had our sky dive booked for 9.15am and didn’t want to be tired or hung over for it.

Sunday 26th April – Day 4

Woke up at about 7.30am this morning after a better night’s sleep than the previous one. There had been a lot of rainfall in the night, and as a result the 7.15am sky dive group got their jumps cancelled. The 8.15am group went, and then it was our turn! We arrived at the Nzone office to fill out our paperwork, get weighed and check in, pay etc. Was quite daunting filling in the paperwork which basically said sky diving may result in injury or death if the parachute fails to open, which is not a great confidence filler when you’re already close to needing new knickers as it is! We then got taken to the drop zone which was about a 15 minute journey from Queenstown, and me and Amy got taken straight through to the prepping area to get our gear on, which was really good as it didn’t give you time to chicken out or think too much about what you were about to do! I felt strangely calmer once I got there and started putting all my gear on and it helped once I met my instructor Greg, who was drop dead gorgeous and so laid back about the whole thing that it made me relax about it too, especially since he’d done over 5000 dives and he’d not died yet, always a plus! We then had a talk about how we would exit the plane, basically sit on the ledge, tuck your feet underneath the plane, head back and arms crossed over your chest. And then we were off!! The plane was quite small and didn’t have chairs or anything you just sat on the floor, which was when I found out that I would be the first to jump out of the plane!! The plane didn’t take very long to climb to 12000ft, but it amused me during the ride up that Greg started to re-do my hair so my hat would fit on properly. The only time I started to panic was when the photographer opened the door to start clambering out of the plane, and then I realised that I would be getting out soon too! This was really the point of no return and I HAD to do this now. I had to swing my legs over the side and take up position like we had talked about, and then there was no time to think about what I was doing really, as Greg rocked back and forward and then we were free falling out of the plane! I kept my eyes shut as we were falling for the first few seconds and then I opened them, it was an amazing sight but the feeling of free falling was really weird and I have to say not particularly nice, although it didn’t feel as bad as I thought it would do! After we had levelled out, Greg tapped my shoulders to let me know that I could open my arms. You fall at a rate of 200km p/h and we fell 7000ft in 45 seconds which is quite scary when you think about it, but the 45 seconds feels so much quicker than I thought it would do. But I found it quite comforting to have the photographer to focus on during the free fall, and then he opened his parachute earlier than us to get down to photograph my landing. Greg pulled the parachute at 5000 feet and then we had a leisurely few minutes paragliding back down to earth, the view was absolutely amazing, you could see the Remarkable mountain ranges, lakes, paddocks, everything, it was just beautiful. Although I also started to feel sick at this point and had to take lots of deep breaths! We got back down to earth okay and it was over so quickly! I’m so glad I did it though, and I’m really chuffed and proud of myself that I managed to do something that I was really scared of. That night we went to the ice bar and a few other bars and it was a really good celebration night, I was on such a high for the rest of the day and I’m so glad I went through with it!