Fox Glacier is Mint

I'm so glad you all appreciated Zoe's chair bungy as much as I did. It was definitely a highlight. Who knows how we're going to top that.

Anyway, it's been far too long, and as usual I've got far too many photos to get through, so you might want to go and get a cup of tea... :) Or just get one anyway, and read someting more interesting, because tea is great

OK. So I have a question for Emma Russo if you're out there. How did you manage to do your skydive in a skimpy top and no helmet, when I had to wear this?? More on that later.

You left us on St Patrick's Day, making lots of new friends, none of whom we can understand. For a bit of respite we headed off to Milford Sound which is a famous, er, sound (water feature). It's one of those places that people gush about, being all magical and lovely etc. We decided to see it by kayak. And this is what it looks like. That's probably all you need to know about that, apart from that it was our first proper acquaintance with big mountains. The village we stayed in has this comedy sign. (There is a prize for anyone that can send me a picture of a "White Way").

And so, yes, lovely mountains etc, but it was now time to go back to crazy Queenstown and fill up on more adventures. The first thing we did was hop on the cable car to the top of the mountain. Where you get a beautiful view of Queenstown, and with my mega zoom on, our van in the campsite! *waves at van*. From the top of the mountain you get a chairlift even furhter up, and ride down on the exciting, and slightly dangerous, concerete luge. And here's our photo finish.
We also, and this was very exciting, went to the bird park and saw a kiwi. They are nocturnal though, so prepare youself for the first instalment of my night-time photography (there's more to come); Yup, this is a kiwi. We also had an incident where Zoe turned into her bird form. Examine the expression and tell me it's not her. On the way out of Queenstown we drove past the world's original, and possibly most famous, bungy site, the Kawarau bridge (At 43 metres high it's 66 metres shorter than the one we did, I would like to point out). Kawarau is also apparently where the "Pillars of the Kings" scene from LOTR was filmed. I have painstakingly recreated the CGI so you can recognise it, here.

Just before you think things couldn't get any more exciting, prepare youself for Puzzle World in Wanaka. It, simply put, is the greatest tourist attraction two nerds could come across. Apart form the altered perspective room where slides go uphill, there is a giant maze, a trompe d'oeil toilet, a room full of spooky faces that follow you round the room (because they're inside out), and a puzzling cafe and I even had a video (from my phone) where we're stood in a room, one of us looks massive and the other small, then we swap ends, but I'm afraid it hasn't worked so you'll have to make do with a still.

It was, basically, photo opportunity galore. And Wanaka itself is beautiful, we camped by the lake with a great view of the land of the long white cloud.

A perfect place, you'd think, for doing a 15,000 foot skydive. Oh yes. This has to be the BEST thing I ever done. 15,000 feet is a looooong way up in the sky. About twice as high as the nearest high mountain. And here is a picture of the nearest high mountain, Mount Aspiring, from the plane. So here I am looking cheerful, if somewhat bald, in the plane ( I was, surprisingly, not scared at all). Here I am getting out of the plane (WHAT were they thinking with those hats), here's me falling - at 200kph (apparently). And the less said about this photo the better. I was sticking my tongue out on purpose. I loved it. I know I look a little taken aback by the inital drop, but I was enjoying myself really, and the rest of it was pretty relaxing, nice view (if a bit windy) etc...

So having exhausted that bit of NZ (and ourselves) we zoomed over to the West Side, via some really incredible scenery, and more mountains. The west coast is quite barren but presents plenty of opportunities for doing art with sticks on the beach. It is also home to the world famous Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. Never being ones to skimp on style, we went up the FJ glacier in a helicopter. Then walked around on it. I could bore you forever with these photos, I love them. Here's our helicopter leaving us behind. And check out the boots they gave me, I loved them. Zoe in a tunnel, Rick in a tunnel, Zoe in a crevasse, Rick and a feature. This was our little team, and here's my picture of the main ice wall. Oh, and not forgetting, me surfing an ice wave. Aren't they great. This was one of my favourite places ever. The helicopter obviously helped.

We met some top people around there too. On this photo you can see Aidhin, (the Irish Claudine), and Mark, who I can say what I like about becuase he can't use a computer and doesn't have an email address. Mark was a lovely horse-man from the swiss army, who (and I thought this was hilarious), had a swiss army knife. I'm not sure who the blonde on the end is, but *waves* hello everyone. Oh and hi sally as well, hope you're enjoying your last few days here! x

The rest of the west coast was pretty remote, rainy, sandfly infested, but we saw the famous pancake rocks (they are made out of piles of pancakes) and, prepare yourself for more top notch wildlife photography, we camped next to this and saw these.

You may be wondering what goes on in between all this frenzy of sightseeing and throwing ourselves off things. Well, we laugh at things in the supermarket: Alison, I've had a flash forward to your future career. We make up lists of the top ten famous people in whichever country we're in ;We only have 4 for NZ so far, and it would be 3 had we not read in a New Idea yesterday that Keith Urban was born here. (And thus revealing another one: reading rubbish local magazines). We also like to endlessly discuss what films and soaps x has been in with y, or who sang with what band when, And, my current most favourite activity at the moment, go bargain hunting in The Warehouse. On my last trip I got a new washbag, 3 CDs and a citronella candle for $40.

We're now heading across the North coast of the South Island, looking forward to our last 2 weeks in NZ, and EEK planning South America.

Love you all, :)

xxx

Zoe Driver: Adrenaline Junkie

Well, just to start you off; Look at this nutter.
Ho ho, and there was me saying New Zealand might not be that blog-worthy.
I'll get back to that.
So last time we spoke we were on our way back from Kaikoura with its dolphins and whales, via Christchurch (the only photos of which I have are of the crazy golf - it's such an interesting place). We carried on South to a place called Geraldine on the Rangitata river - best rafting in NZ apparently. So that's what I did, to kick off the extreme sports. (Zoe had a relaxing day getting to know the local mad people, but I'll let her tell you about that.)
So, that's me at the front, getting wet, wetter and wettest. It was sooo much fun, I want to go every day. We finished off with a 10 metre jump into the gorge, which you can see me being very cool about *ahem*.
Things were a bit more sedate after that for a few days, some nice camping among the sand dunes, rugged coasts and the sunsets. (NB That last photo was taken in a campsite, not a concentration camp, despite appearances). Ooh, christiane, we had your jam with some scones it was lovely.
We visited the Moeraki boulders (you can see I'm starting to look like a transient after a week in the camper van) which have a honeycomb centre, geology/malteser fans. Then we headed down to Dunedin which is full of Scottish people. The Otago peninsula near Dunedin has some cool wildlife. Look at this chubby fella. And this one! He was having a very lazy day. We also went to a penguin sanctuary which had exciting underground tunnels, and, of course, some penguins. There was also a nice castle with pretty flowers round it. No visit to Dunedin would be complete (apparently) without a trip to the chocolate factory, where I was humiliated into wearing a "beard snood". Factory rick, notagoodlook. Here is Zoe in front of a mountain of crunchies.
So having got the middle-aged activities out of the way we set off for beautiful Queenstown and moved onto the stupid stuff. That's us in our jet boating outfits. Jetboats are daft things designed and operated by cheerful petrol-heads, which can be filled up with tourists, chucked around a river at several million miles an hour, and swerved past rocks, and do 360 degree spins. (I don't think they have any other purpose). There is also a video of that. Hilariously it features me picking my nose. Queenstown itself is ace, on a lake surrounded by mountains, brimming with pubs and restaurants, and full of idiots chucking themselves off things. Which brings me on to the canyon swing. I'm not sure what we were thinking here. We sort of thought it would be a nice fun swing (I imagine a few of you are shaking you heads here) but of course it's actually just a bungy jump where you don't bounce back up, you swing across. And it's more scary - your average bungy jump has 40 metres of freefall and this has 60. Sooo stupid.
So we got in our outfits, Zoe was quite calm, and I was fucking terrified. Zoe went first and after a bit of coaxing managed to jump off forwards which was mightily impressive. I was having none of this, and made them hang me up and pull a release thing so I didn't have to jump. Predictably, for full comic effect, he released it mid sentence, ("There's just a couple of things I need to *snip*") and I screamed like someone being murdered with a chainsaw. Here I am falling.
Then Zoe decided she wanted to do it again. I have NO idea what was going through her head. If you do it again you don't have to pay but you do have to do a crazy stunt - so, obviously, she chose falling off backwards strapped to a plastic garden chair. You can never get enough of this picture.
And then the next day, for a bit of respite, we did a whole day of horse riding which we loved, despite a slight feeling of the landscape being marred by Lord of the Rings tourism. Here's adrenaline Driver going at full pelt and here's me and Polar splashing about in the river. We met a lovely couple of lads on the horseriding called Peter and Alex and had lunch in a deserted mining village. Peter has promised to mention my sunglasses on his blog.
And that, as they say, is that. St Patrick's day was fairly predictable.

And if you REALLY want to see them, here are the videos of our canyon swing. *holds head in hands*

Rick
Zoe (swing 2)

Blue Mountains Not Blue: Shock Report

The Blue Mountains are not blue, nor are they mountains, I can exclusively reveal. They are in fact a big green valley. A source close to the mountains yesterday claimed, "They sometimes look blue, from a distance". Seeing as this is the case with all mountains, I remain unconvinced. However they are very nice, but in the interests of chronology I'll get on to that later.
We got back to Sydney just over a couple of weeks ago now, and had an amazing few days recuperating and resting back at Christiane's. She made us fabulous healthy food, and we read books, played with Mitsy and went for swims in the local rock pool. One day it got full of bluebottle jellyfish (Portuguese man'o'war) and I got scared and got out, although some people kept swimming. I've heard they give you great scars that look like whip marks but I got out anyway and spent an hour fishing them out with a net and inspecting them, before throwing them in the jellyfish bin. Our most spectacular trip to the rock pool was when a storm came over like a roof. Unfortunately this was the storm that soaked my ipod and it is now dead.
Then we checked into the youth hostel in town, for the weekend, (youth hostels have changed - look at this rooftop pool!), met up with our friend Rory from Fraser Island, did some shopping, and mooched around the city. (Which by this point was infested with gays).
Check out this graffitti - one of my favourite pictures so far this trip.
And then on Saturday it was Mardi Gras. Obviously this was a lot of fun, and the pictures are endless. I will try and be brief.
We started off in the park, where there were some teenagers in funny neon outfits, and then headed up to the parade which was led by the dykes on bikes. (Here's more). Followed by all the obligatory representation from the public services - here's the police, and the army although I sincerely hope that's not the real army. Here's me up a lamppost watching the parade (yes that's another home haircut). This is Zoe and Christiane pretending to be lesbians, quite convincing I thought. We also made some friends; Here's Christiane with a gladiator, and this is me with little red riding hood. Other highlights included the big head-dresses, dancing letters, a man dressed up as kylie (obviously), and Lisa this is specially for you, a "bear" dressed up as an angel. There's a lot more I could bore you with, but I won't. I personally never get bored of glittery sponge lettering. And here's a good example of how my stupid new camera always focuses on the wrong thing. I vaguely remember later on making friends with a nice man from the navy, with a pirate-ship tattoo. I forget his name, but that's his fault for buying me four whisky and cokes.
We flung away our hangovers in true city-Sunday style by going for a massive breakfast, walk (over the bridge to the North shore) where we went to the fair. I went on a pirate ship, in honour of the man whose name I have forgotten. After being scared "wit"less in the "prison Break Live" thing (never go in one - it involves a chicken wire maze with strobe lighting, and out of work actors covered in blood flinging themselves at you in the dark, it was horrible. Zoe will want me to point out she wasn't scared, but I was) we found our better selves in the hall of mirrors, and played on the slides.
And then we had our last day in Australia, at the "Blue Mountains" (see above). They were cool, comprising Australia's highest waterfall folks, an intrepid 3 hour hike through the jungle (see I told you they're not mountains), a ride on a brass horse, a very steep funicular railway, a cable car past the three sisters and some aboriginal dancing.
And that, guys, was our last day in Australia. *weep*. We are missing lots of things, but one thing we are NOT missing is Christiane's jam, because she gave us some to take with us and we had to cleverly smuggle it through customs. This was our last view of Sydney, from the airport.

And now we're in New Zealand! It's verrrry beautiful, and unlike Australia the weather is beautiful too *touch wood*.
Due to budgetry restraints we've hired a "wicked camper" in Christchurch, which are cheap rubbish camper vans for students and poor people. They are only about ten quid a day though - and we need it for five weeks. The downside is that they all have some crazy art on them. And you don't get to choose. We missed out on all the cool ones (We've seen The Doors, Kiss, Elvis, etc) and have ended up with a jaded political message about George Bush. It could have been worse. Look at this one we were parked next to. What were they thinking??
So after some teething problems (the radiator pipe blew off and sprayed water and oil all through the gear box and onto my jeans) the van is fully up and running. It has been amazing so far. Very different to Oz. I'm wondering how to make it blog-worthy seeing as everywhere is very deserted, and there is nothing much to do except drive places and look at the scenery, which is great for us, but boring for you. You'll like this though, we went on a boat from yet another crowded beach, and saw our first ever whale. In fact we saw three, and some dolphins, which was amazing.
So, thanks to some careful planning over sandwiches in the van, we are well underway in New Zealand. We have also been to Akoroa bay, which has a really cute town, and one of our favourite things, a crap museum. And yesterday when it was windy we did some crazy golf. Check out the Downtown hole, the rollercoaster (your ball actually goes on the rollercoaster) and the castle with the snapping portcullis. All pure genius.
The nicest thing about NZ is the familiar wildlife. I saw some bumble bees yesterday, and a couple of days ago a hedgehog tried to lick our washing up clean. I am rambling a bit, and running out of money on the meter, so I had better go. Today's picture to finish is this one of Zoe demonstrating how windy it can get here.
Oh, and what do you call a lesbian off-license? Yup.
See you all soon!
x