south island in COLD! not quite the -12C that we had been told, but pretty chilly nonetheless. having learnt our lesson after the north island debacle, we had hired a car in advance, the aptly named el cheapo. el cheapo was a pretty rickety white 4 door mazda, automatic transmission which was pretty gay, but otherwise suited our needs perfectly and we basically arrived at the airport and hit the road immediately, we had like 5 days to see the whole island, which meant LOTS of driving. the journey down to queenstown took 5-6 hours, el cheapo was relishing the flat straight roads and the scenery really is spectacular, its all massive flat plains surrounded by mountains at first, then you start to climb. el cheapo doesn't like climbing very much, especially when the roads started getting icy, and we didn't have any music for most of it cos the mountains block any signal and most of the time you're hundreds of miles from any proper towns. still had loads of fun though, and turned up in queenstown early evening way ahead of schedule.

howver it turned out we had had another mare, as being the middle of winter it was ski season. and queenstown has the best skiing in the country, which meant no beds for us. farce. tried pretty much every hostel in town with no luck, and eventually had to stay at a motel which was pretty expensive, not too bad though for one night and it was either that or literally the grottiest hostel i have ever seen, sharing a room with an amourous and pretty unsavoury looking couple, didnt really fancy that.

woke up the next day unbeleivably cold, put on pretty much all the clothes we owned and hit the town. queenstown is a tiny mountain resort town, its really touristy but still quite cool, its basically all about extreme sports and skiing. spent a bit of time looking into the activities, and about midday popped into the skydiving shop to see what was going on. within an hour we had signed up to jump out of a plane at 12000 feet and were on a minibus speeding off into the wilderness to some remote airfield, wondering what the hell happened. all paid off though, skydive was phenomenal. best thing ever, fact. got our harnesses on then squeezed 7 of us into literally the smallest plane you have ever seen and took off over the mountains and lakes. i was jumping first, so my instructor harnessed me to himself, opened the door and pushed me out. you dangle there for a couple of seconds, thinking errr....s***... then he jumps out ond you go AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHH, except you can't because you accelerate to 200km/h in 12 seconds and its pretty hard to get any noise out! freefall for like 45 seconds, which is ridiculously fun, then he opens the parachute and it feels like you just stop middair, dangling over all the amazing scenery, its so awesome. really clear day as well, so could see for miles. then u gently glide down to the landing sight, landing is actually really soft, didnt break my ankles at all. seriously, if u get the chance try it, its immense. also now we weren;t afraid of falling off stuff anymore, and really wanted to do some other stuff like jumping off bridges and into canyons. unfortunately we couldnt get anywhere to stay again in queenstown and were on the tightest schedule ever, so had to hit the road again straight away. probably a good thing as far as the bank balance was concerned!

next stop was milford sound, which is what the picture above is of. its in lord of the rings i think and is quite famous, although its incredibly remote quite hard to get to so doesnt exactly get crowded with tourists at this time of year. the drive was like another 5 hours, but the vast mjority of that was spent doing the last 50 km or so, when the road gets ridiculously steep and icy and goes up, around and through the mountains. also we arrived in the dark, so had to take it pretty slow. el cheapo wasn't enjoying itself too much and didnt really fancy getting stuck in a snow drift and eaten by bears. made it in the end tho, far too easy. milford is ridiculously small, the town consists of one pub, one hostel lodge place that we were staying at, and thats about it. the lodge was powered by a generator, which is turned off at 11pm along with all the power and heating. not ideal. also realised we should probably have brought some food, as other than the steak meal at the pub included in this deal we got, we had to live on bread and beans. and the 2kg bag of apples that i had been lugging around since auckland, was struggling slightly with the apple challenge by then. next day got the cruise around the sound, which is possibly the best scenery anywhere ever, beautiful. bloody cold though. also we finally saw a penquin much to williams' delight, cheeky little critter was having an awesome time hopping around on a rock, then falling off the rock. turned out it was a yellow eyed penquin, one of the rarest birds in the world. stormer. saw some sea lions as well, really enjoyed it but pretty glad to get back to the warm, toes were almost frozen solid. it was kinda hard to get any beer in milford sound, and other than a few walks there's literally nothing else to do, so we basically played a lot of cards, watched a couple of films in the hostel (shaun of the dead, obviously) and tried not to freeze to death. also we managed to get a massive crack in el cheapo's windscreen, but luckily had bought all the insurance so were covered, could have been pretty screwed otherwise! left early in the morning so the roads were quite icy still, but since it was daylight we got to see all the awesome views on the way out, too many awesome views actually, think we've seen enough mountains and lakes to last a lifetime.

decided to stay in wanaka on the way back, its quite similar to queenstown but less high profile and consequently a lot more pleasant. using perhaps questionable judgement, we decided to try and go snowboarding for the day since we got free lift passes with the car rental, although only found out once we had hired all our gear and driven up the mountain (el cheapo was in so much pain by the top!) that we actually only had one lift pass and getting any more was really pricey, let alone getting lessons. farce. however this was probably a good thing, as it turns out snowboarding is really hard and we are really bad at it, probably would have killed ourselves going up to the top! still, had an awesome time messing about on the practice slopes, could actually go along and sometimes turn without falling over by the end, stormer. fell over rather a lot in the process though, our backsides took the biggest battering ever. almost got stranded on the way down as el cheapo was a bit of a wreck by this stage and making some very strange noises/smells, but made it in the end. great day.

final stop was christchurch aftre a 6 hour drive, which is another nondescript city with not very much to do, which was quite good as didn't have to do any sightseeing and could just sleep. or so we thought, until some horrid chavs set the fire alarm off at 4am and we had to stand outside for ages. livid. finally got to have some beer though, in an unprecedented turn of events, due to being ridiculously busy and all the driving we had been completely sober since auckland, unbelievable. found the grumpy mole tavern, tpo is a grumpy mole and fitted in very well. went to the cinema the last night to see pirates 3, silliest film ever, good fun tho. also we when we were in auckland we saw transformers, best film EVER. big robots + fast cars + fit girls = happy men. flew to melbourne the next morning where i currently am nursing a particularly cracking hangover, hence wasting all morning on the internet. might go try and find some food soon. btw cheers for all the messages, always good to hear from people, and congrats to everyone who's told us their results, told you all finals were a piece of cake. right thats all for a while probably, just racked up the biggest internet bill of all time, yaaaaaaaaaaaay. take it easy people. and don't do drugs.

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