Helloo all you little spring chickens!

Hope you are all well and good, and just to say this is Laura and Charlene with you here today taking you on our journey, we thought we'd give Jess a rest.

Soo... WE SURVIVED! We fell out of a tiny plane 12,000ft in the air with grown men strapped to our backs, and we made it to the ground (the parachutes opened and everything!). We thought it was absulutely bloody fantastic, we have DVDs to document the occasion, so when they reach home feel free to pop round to wither of our houses (sorry, mums) and watch the joyous event. We skydived over Fox Glacier (it wasn't a mint believe it or not) and so the view on our way down was something else. We were very proud of ourselves afterwards, felt like we could take on the world...more cliches, anyone?

The following day was filled with more extreme sport-type adventures when we hopped into a helicopter to take us all the way to the top of the Franz Josef Glacier so that we could take a little hike over the ice. The helicopter ride was really good, we would recommend it as a spiffing for of transport for anyone who's got a few grand going spare.. Jess wasn't too pleased with the pilot when he tilted the vessel sideways for an even better view of the mountain, but the fear was soon taken over with mild discomfort when she put her booted and ice-spiked foot through some thin ice and into the freezing water below...poor Jess! Char managed to cause a minor landslide when she touched the top of one of the caves we travelled through. She was behind myself and Jess so when we heard an extremely loud (and surprisingly echoey) thump, we turned and to be fair were not that surprised to see Char there with a little sheepish grin on her face having just caused 2 of the 4ft of glacier movement of the day. Hope you liked that little fact I slipped in there, the Franz Josef glacier is actually the fastest moving glacer in the world, so the landslide wasn't really an exaggeration...

After the helicopter ride back, we had (shocker) the afternoon off! We didn't really do alot, as I'm sure you can imagine we were fairly knackered after sleeping in dank smelly hostel room after dank smelly hostel room... The evening was spent in the hostel bar (surprise surprise) and an early night was had to be sure we were up intime for pickup the following morning (7:30?!?)

A few sceninc stops for walks and the like (the Kiwi bus driver insists on calling us 'possums' and seems to think we need a pie every 3 and a half seconds, so stops a fair amount..in fact, one of the stops was at lake Wanaka, so that was pretty nice..), we arrived at Wanaka, where we were to spend one night before the final big south island destination of Queenstown. In Wanaka, we had a bit of a mission trying to decide on a food establishment that would everyone could agree on and that could accommodate us. After a 30 minute walk filled with complaints and indecision, we finally settled on what we had thought would be the best idea in the first place...split up and do what you like... I (Laura) also had a little jog with our new found friend Chris, a very eccentric New Yorker who has skinny jeans to rival that of any Brighon 'emo'.

On the way to Queenstown, we stopped at a little museum type place called Puzzlin World, which was basically a series of rooms with random, mind-boggling amusements, including holograms, sloping floors and a maze... and we were amazed...

Queenstown is our current location and we're loving it so far. It' bigger than the other places we've stopped at, but far from the bus driver's promises, it's still only about the size of Guildford...It's great! We went on a little Kiwi Experience night out last night, and much fun was had by all at the the world bar, where you can get free teapots (jut teapots filled with very strong cocktails) if you recite the password (when Laura was asked for the password, it all got a bit confusing when she began whipping out her passport in an inoccent error...Ah well...

We do have some plans for Queenstown, being the adventure capital of the world, but I think it's best we keep shtum about them for a while, to 1, keep you all hanging on for the next one like a good episode of Eastenders, and 2, give my poor mum a good night's sleep... so until them, possums, much love!! xxxxxxx