After picking up our campervan from Christchurch we headed straight towards Queenstown, with having been told varying estimates of how long this drive would take (anywhere between 4 and 10 hours!) we thought we'd just see how far we got to. This turned out to be Lake Tekapo. We thought about continuing but absolutely loved it so decided to stay the night in the local campsite right next to the lake. After watching the sun set we set up camp, cooking a gourmet meal of pasta and pesto (pasta has turned out to be our staple diet for the trip!).

Our campervan is very little but everything we need. Cooking facilities are all fine although there was some initial user error with the fridge and gas cooker, it didn't help that these also seem to be a bit tempremental.

The next morning we headed towards Queenstown but took a detour on a dirt track to the top of a little hill overlooking a different lake which was incredible (despite being slightly concerned that we were either going to roll down the hill into the water or break our van on our first proper day driving!). We also stopped off at a few local shops on the side of the road and bought local fresh veggies, chutnies and cider before arriving in Queenstown for lunch. We booked our jetboating for that day (thank you Emma!) which is basically an extremely fast boat which takes you through tiny gaps in canyons and does 360s in spaces where they really shouldn't!. The water at times for 2 inches deep as the boat sort of hovers over it. It was amazing!

The adrenaline from this didn't prove to satisfy Ben who then went on to book his skydive for the following day (12000ft!). We then had a dinner of pasta (but with tomato sauce this time to change things round a bit!).

This morning we took the gondola up the mountain and then luged (funny little go kart type things on a thin track) halfway down it before decided that a better way to get down would be to paraglide. This was also amazing and we got some photos and a video! (we'll try to upload).

We have just got back from Ben's skydive where 'Rob' came to greet us, a complete nutter who we were pretty sure would forget to attach Ben to himself or soemthing equally as terrifying. Despite our initial concerns it turned out to be fantastic with the best views and biggest adrenaline rush he's ever had.

We probably won't have internet for a while again as we're heading to Milford Sound tomorrow (google image it, it looks amazing!) and then after that we've got lots of driving to glaciers on teh west coast.

Hope everybody's ok at home.

Lots of Love Ben and Katie xxx

p.s. we're just going to try upload photos but internet isn't great so hopefully have a look at those soon xx