So got to the ferry and set off at half 8 for the 3 hour trip to the South island.Arrived in Picton and got onto our new bus.Our old driver Grumpy Pete didn't come over with us so we met our new driver Guy.Soon discovered that we were now on the party bus!!!!He has certain rules on the bus, including the last two people on the bus get handcuffed together!Also the words that, mine, flip flop and thong (they call them jandals here) are banned, and the fine in 10 push ups or sit ups!

Stopped one night at Kaiteriteri in the Abel Tasman national park, nice scenery although we didn't do very much except have a well needed early night.Monday we set off for Westport, a small town on the west coast.On this evening we did a 3 legged pub crawl!Except there were way more girls than boys so some guys had to be strapped to 2 girls.I was with one of those unfortunate guys!!Poor Alex had me one side and Harriet the other, he had very sore ankles by the end!Tom got very lucky and was only attached to one girl and they marched on past us all shouting 1, 2, 1, 2, in Danish!

Tuesday we left Westport and our first stop was Tauranga Bay, where we saw some seals, including baby ones aww!Stopped off in Greymouth for lunch and then went onto Lake Mahinapua which was our stop for the night.We stayed at a very old school pub owned by an 84 year old man, where we had a steak dinner and then a fancy dress valentines party, we were a bit boring and didn't dress up but it was still good fun.

Wednesday morning Tom and I got up and went to see the Lake before we had to leave, very beautiful like a lot of the scenery in New Zealand.Our first stop was the Bushman's centre, a little museum where they show how the people made a living before all the tourism, deer hunting.Basically by jumping out of a low flying helicopter onto the deers back!!!They showed us quite a crazy video of this!In the afternoon we arrived in the town of Franz Josef, apparently called this because it was discovered by an Austrian who decided to name it after his emperor at the time.Before tea we tried out the glacier hot pools, not quite as amazing as you imagine (Tom had visions of sitting up on the glacier in a natural hot pool!Its more like just 3 swimming pools but hotter!One 36 degrees, one 38 and one 40.The 40 was a bit much for us and we didn't last long in that one!

Thursday we set off to hike up the glacier!I was quite prepared for this after the mountain crossing we did, but also quite relieved that it wasn't actually as difficult!We had to walk 2km to the start of the glacier, it used to come a lot further down but at the moment its receding.Here we got given crampons to walk on the ice more easily.We had a really good day for it as the sun was out so it wasn't too cold. Tom spent the whole day with his trousers rolled up!On the way up we got to go into some ice caves which were really cool inside.Altogether we spent about 6 hours on the ice and another 2 hours walking there and back.Yet another amazing thing to do in New Zealand!In the evening we met back up with our pal Ruth and they both entered the air pong tournament in the bar, this involves a ping pong ball and two hair dryers!Well Tom managed to win and Ruth came second!It worked out well for all of us as Tom won a canyoning trip and Ruth won a 2for1 jet boat ride so I get to do that with her while Tom does his canyoning!

Friday we headed to Lake Wanaka, on the way stopping to see Lake Matheson with Mount Cook in the back ground.It was lovely but a little disappointing as it was cloudy and on a clear day there is a perfect reflection of the mountain in the lake.We just had to buy a postcard of it instead!Wanaka is so beautiful and our bus driver organised a cheese and wine evening by the lake which was great!

Yesterday morning we left Wanaka, destination Queenstown!Everyone on the bus very excited!Not sure if it was the excitement or what but when we stopped half an hour outside Queenstown at the first ever bungy jump site, I suddenly decided I should do one!!!!!I have never had this thought before its always been a NO WAY so I really don't know what happened to me, crazy 5 minutes!Not brave enough to do it on my own, Tom and I did a tandem jump.When we got up on the bridge and some man started tying my feet up I started to panic big time!We shuffled up to the edge and I was holding onto the rail for dear life, shouting 'no, I'm not doing it anymore!' quite a few times!Somehow the man persuaded me to let go of the rail and hold onto Tom instead!He was so brave and just went for it, and I had no choice but to go too, screaming all the way down!!!!The actual feeling of falling was really amazing, its just the fact of having to throw yourself off that I couldn't handle!Well you'd think that would be enough for one day, or lifetime, but no, 5.30pm we were up on another platform looking down 109 metres to the Shotover River in Queenstown.This one is called a canyon swing so I thought it wouldn't be so scary. However, it still had a 60 metre free fall before you go into a swing so it really jusy as bad as a bungy!I insisted on another tandem and for some crazy reason we decided to do this one backwards!Being pushed off by some stranger and not being able to see where your going is SO scary!

That really is enough for me!Tom is so brave, or mad, and is doing another jump as I'm writing this.Hes going big and doing the Nevis bungy, 134 metres (compared to 43 yesterday!) I'm almost nervouse for him aaahhhhhhh!!!