Sorry not written for a while, I am just sitting in a hostel in Queenstown and it's been an absolute mission to sit down for more than 10 mins and write something down. We landed in Christchurch at about midnight on last Wednesday and stayed in the centre of Christchurch for two nights. Christchurch is the closest you could get to an English town, I say town because its not very big at all. We decided to wonder around and see what there is to do - turns out not much. We caught a bus and headed up on a cable car to check out the veiws of the tip of the Southern Alps.

The next day we jumped on our 'hop on hop off' bus which headed out towards a town called Wesport which is on the far north west coast of the South Island. We travelled through Lewis Pass on the way with some really great views. We arrived at Westport which is a mining community and that's it. There were plenty of mullets around! Our driver (Damo) advised us to always count their fingers before starting a conversation. The best thing about Westport is that after we had all eaten at the hostel we headed down to the massive beach to make a huge bonfire with all the driftwood and have a few beers with the sunset. Really cool!

The next day was just a short drive down the coast to a pub in the middle of nowhere called the Poo Pub. It's just south of Greymouth (this is where we picked up the supplies for our fancy dress party later). Anyway, before that we had a 2 hour jetboating trip on Lake Mahinapua which was brilliant fun and everyone ended up soaked which didn't really matter because it was about 30 degrees by 11:00am and we were all dry sharpish.

After a couple of hours driving along the caost and a few stops to take in the breathtaking veiws we arrived at the Poo Pub. Strange name, but it's such a laugh. Very basic and very good fun but I won't bore you with all the evening's antics. Just look on facebook for the hurrendous photos.

By now we had made some really cool friends and there was a big group of us with a good banter going on. So, as we head to Franz Joseph Glacier, our driver Damo persuaded us all to do a skydive. Like a pair of idiots we rose to the challenge.

When you go up, you fly over the Southern Alps, the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers which are massive and looking down on the mountains you think, 'this actually isn't that high and can't be too bad?', thats until the bloody plane flys out of the mountains and to the coast. Buger me it's high then!! Some people say that when you skydive and free fall it doesn't really feel like your falling. If anyone ever says that to you, break their nose for me. You do fall...... and bloody fast! And then the shoot opens and you don't die, it's brilliant!

Our second day in Franz Joseph was just as good as the second, we went ice climbing on the glacier. It was just like Touching the Void, apart from when your hanging onto to ice axes 40 meters up with no foot holds, it's more like touching cloth! It was brilliant fun and a very long day so we were pretty tired and of course ended up having another late night with the group. Having so much fun!!

From Franz Joseph we then headed to Lake Wanaka via some stunning scenary, Lake Tekapo for example (picture above) was brilliant. Lake Wanaka however was even better. We arrived about 2:00pm and it was boiling hot yet again - hard life! So we went swimming in the lake and drank a few crates of beers and had a bbq watching the sun go down (which was about 10:00pm). This place is stunning and I wanted to stay but we wanted to stay with our bus more becasue we've made some really great mates.

From Wanaka, we headed to Quuenstown. On the way we stopped at the very first commercial bungy jump which is 46m high but it looked a lot higher. Like an absolute donkey, I've put my name down for a bungy 136m high with a swing on it. I am sitting her typing this absolutley terrified!!! Bowel movements have been substantial!!!

If no more blog entries appear, you'll know why.

Pictures for all the above will be added shortly - the computer I'm on is rubbish and won't upload any of them!