It was a sad day for us yesterday, we had to say goodbye to a very dear friend... Malcolm. Its been emotional, to summarise we've clocked up 3,348 miles, 2 islands, 1 ferry crossing, 2 glaciers, 1 canyon swing, 2 sperm whales, 24 free range eggs, 4 fergburgers, 2 seasons of The Wire, 21 holiday parks, and countless adventures together - Malcolm... god speed.

We're now back in Auckland waiting to fly out on Thursday to Bangkok for our Asian leg of the trip - ash cloud permitting (Chilean Volcano ash cloud circumnavigating the Southern Hemisphere)! Highlights since our last post are:

- Visiting a 180,000,000 year old petrified forest (wood that has turned to stone), this happens to be located in Curio Bay which is undoubtedly the windiest place in the world (not factually true...)

- Crusied through the hisotircal town of Clyde, which is like stepping back into the wild west, minus the horses, saloons, and gun toting criminals.

- Swung back to Queenstown so Al could tackle the highest cliff jump in the world (annoyingly the video hasn't uploaded properly and the originalcopy is now on its back to Blighty) he's now part of the Fellowship of thew Swings... ahem.

- Danced all night with Dustin - our american NZ friend, we went to a live deb step night in Subculture then proceeded to drink very expensive beer (Moa) and got rattled which resulted in a wasted day recovering. Drinkings bad.

- Watched season two of The Wire... Omar = Ledge.

- We then headed for the mountainous West Coast where we admired Fox Glacier from afar and got up close and personal with the Franz Josef glacier on an 8 hour hike. Think waterproofs, crampons and impressive blue ice formations/caves. Its probably worth mentioning the funniset guy who was in our tour group. He turned up for the hike with a totally unsuitable carrier bag which only contained hummuys for lunch and his swimming trunks. Bizarelly, he thought that the hot pools were at the top of the glacier and not down in the village where they are widely advertised. He dropped his gloves hundreds of times, was always at the back, dangerously close to life ending drops, and quickly earnt the nickname of The Faffer and the New Idoit Abroad. I guess you had to be there appreciate it.

- Went to Arthurs Pass which is one of the main routes between the East and West coast, and was origionally a Gold road during the gold rush of the 1900's. The road is trecharous with corners typicallyand aptly named things like Death Corner, Starvation Point and Deception Hill.

- Shot over to back to the far east coast to the Banks Pennisular which was formed years ago by three violent volcano explosions but has left a peaceful, tranquill and absurdly beautiful place. Stayed in Akaroa which has a ditinctly French feel to it, after they discovered it.

- Stayed the night in the suburbs of Christchurch, sadly the CBD is still closed due to the earthquake damage. They are still aftershocks felt today in oparts of the city but we didn't experience any.

- Spruced Mal up ready for his return for his rightful owners, he was just as sad as we were. Mysteriously as we were walking away his horn beeped and water leaked from his windscreen wipers...

Full of anticipation for Asia, although not particularly looking forward to the 12 hours of flying in order to get there... but if thats our biggest worry - we're doing OK! Got some Visa duties to tend to upon our arrival, so it may be a little while until the next post.

Choice.