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So, New Zealand was a month ago.... We'll try and tell you what we remember! Our first glimpse of New Zealand was at 4am walking the 12 minute walk from the international terminal to the domestic because the shuttles didn't start until 6! After a relatively stress free journey we landed in Christchurch where we were picked up in the campervan by some familiar faces. After hanging around for a few hours we picked our final passenger and we were on our way. Christchurch was not terribly eventful especially as we tried to go out in "Christchurch on a Tuesday" which was simply not done as Peter told us from the reception of a very nice hotel! Our maiden voyage was to Hanmer Springs where we visited the not so natural springs in the pouring rain. However sitting in a swimming pool at 30 something degrees in the rain was actually quite fun. All of our travelling on the South Island took us past spectacular scenery but it would get pretty monotonous for you if we told you about every single road so we'll stick to the main points. Mount Cook was our next major stop but due to a lack of camping facilities and snow on the ground we decided that a night freedom camping was not the best plan!
After a few days driving and a rather uneventful stop in Geraldine we arrived in Queenstown. We'd all been excited about it as everybody raves about the "city" and the first thing we did was to go and book all of our extreme sports (well some of us did! Our next priority was to buy a ski jacket as we were fed up of the cold we had had for the past 2 months and we knew we were expecting more of it. Annoyingly the boys were all able to come prepared and had ski jackets and gloves galore. We settled down to watch the rugby three hours before the game as you would have to in England in order to find a seat, only to discover that the Kiwi's don't turn up until 5 minutes before. Anyway, the game was diabolical and with the Kiwi's defeated we headed back to the campervan to sleep. Our first extreme event was the jet boating, and we all took part! These boats were able to reach speeds of 80km in water depths of only 4 inches. During our trip we did numerous high speed 360 degree spins in which Martin gradually got wetter and wetter whilst we all stayed fairly dry. With no time to dwell on it, Carrie, Jim and Martin were up and registering for their bungy jump at 8am. After our minibus chose the "I'm Going To Die" soundtrack for the journey to the jump we were all suitably sullen... Then we saw the drop. Carrie jumped last out of the three much to her relief and for some reason jumped without a second thought! Once winched back up upside down because she was unable to release the right cord, she swore never to do anything that stupid again. Which leads us nicely on to the Canyon Swing which the whole group did (minus Laura), some of us even did it twice (everyone bar Carrie!). Once again it involved throwing oneself from a very great height and after watching Jim, Rich and Martin jump Carrie wasn't feeling too bad.... until she got to the edge. After jumping forwards the day before on the bungy she felt obliged to jump backwards, however jumping this time was not as easy as the day before and after minutes of joking around from the two guys doing it she was finally feeling like she could actually jump. The support guy had let go of her harness and said it was up to her so she leant back and jumped...then he grabbed her and pulled her back in! She threw a hissy fit, her legs went to jelly and she struggled to stand. Regardless of this, they still pushed her back out on to the edge. After another ten minutes of psyching herself up, she finally managed to jump!
Our next memorable stop was Dunedin where Cadbury's World and the Speights Factory tour featured heavily in our itinerary. We were not surprised to learn that England was the biggest chocolate consumer and did you know that Cadbury's Dream was created in and still made only in New Zealand?! As for the Speights, the boys had free access to seven different Speights beers on tap for twenty minutes.We'll let you figure out the rest. Our hangovers only allowed us to taste the water!
From there we ventured to Te Anau where we met Amy from uni (Andy's girlfriend Mummy Elliott!). We had been warned that the road to the Fiordlands was really bad and not worth taking the campervan to so we booked a coach and cruise combo. After a very informative and scenic journey to Milford Sound we got on our cruise in relatively good weather and marked our spot on the top deck. It would be difficult to explain the dramatic scenery that was there and when it started to rain, it just gave us another view of the spectacular scenery.
Lake Wanaka was our next stop with a quick visit to Puzzling World where it later emerged that Ricky did not win our maze challenge! However, this was forgotten as soon as we hit the slopes the next day! Whilst Carrie and Jim hit the real slopes, Laura and Rich were off to ski and snowboard school respectively. Laura had a good first morning's skiing with some hilarious Irish people and when she met the others for lunch was very proud to tell them that she had started learning to turn. Carrie had set her a challenge of not falling over for the whole day which went swimmingly throughout the lessons on the nursery slope. As soon as the first Green Run was attempted she fell off of the ski lift and landed at Carrie's feet! Challenge not completed! And then Carrie got screamed at for being in the way and taking a picture of Laura on the floor (you can see that delightful picture on Facebook). After falling over for the first part of the run, as soon as Carrie and Jim left, Laura was steady on her feet! Laura was pleased that she chose that day to learn as from Carrie's frozen nostril hair and not being able to see her hand in front of her face she deduced that the next day's weather hadn't been quite so good! Luckily, the third day was back to blue sky but as they left Carrie and Jim had managed to ski down every run possible! Although Rich enjoyed and mastered snowboarding, his bum didn't thank him as he wasn't able to sit down comfortably for the rest of his time in New Zealand!
After our snow adventures, we were off to tackle some ice in the form of the Franz Josef Glacier. The night before the hike, Carrie and Laura sensibly watched a film, made all the beds and the sandwiches, whilst the boys met the Oz Experience bus and Tom (who is Tom?) in the bar. At 1am (Jim sneakily told Carrie it was midnight) the boys literally jumped through the door and proceeded to bounce on Laura and wrestle each other on Martin's bed. After being ignored by the annoyed girls they headed to bed but Rich proceeded to talk absolute crap in Laura's ear for fifteen minutes! Jim also tried but Carrie was wearing earplugs, hehehe, thanks Mum! With another early start we got suited, booted and cramponed and went our separate ways up to the glacier. Carrie decided to do the 8 hour hike whilst Laura opted for a more leisurely (read lazy) 4. Carrie, Martin, Rich and Jim traversed the ice, squeezing through tiny crevasses and walking through a ten metre long ice tunnel. Cool! Meanwhile Laura was admiring her good looking instructor and laughing at the rather large lady who was unable to squeeze through the wormholes or caves and simply had to walk around! That evening, after spending a good hour in the hot tub, we all hit the bar. Rich triumphed over the skinny blonde in a beanie who turned out to be a demon pool player, winning the Killer Pool competition and landing himself the top prize of a bungy jumo in Queenstown. Seeing as we couldn't go back, Rich opted to swap his prize for the 50 dollar bar tab that the runner up had won resulting in us all having a very good night!
Running out of time, we headed up the island for our ferry, stopping at Murchison simply as somewhere to sleep. We reached Picton for our ferry crossing relatively early so spent the afternoon collecting shells on the beach and playing in the park. Thanks to Jim, Laura got covered in mussel (the mollusc) gunk, after he obligingly smashed the shell open for Martin. The most exciting thing that happened on the ferry was the way the huge lorries had to park! Instead of driving on one way and off the other, after driving on to the ferry they then had to turn around in a rather small space at the end and come back to face the other way! We were mightily impressed at the ginormous Cadbury's lorry who managed to pretty much pivot on the spot!
Our time on the North Island was relatively brief so as soon as possible we got ourselves to an information centre and booked blackwater rafting and a skydive. This was a decision we would later come to regret when we found out the huge problems Michelle had caused us! The b****ing about Michelle became the only reason we were allowed to veto our swearbox! A very long drive took us all way way to the Waitomo Caves where, because of the awful rain, the blackwater rafting had been cancelled but nobody had informed us. We made our way straight to Lake Taupo where we sat for a further two days in the torrential rain whilst our skydives kept being cancelled one after the other! We gave up and moved on to the Bay of Plenty where the weather brightened and we spent our first night freedom camping. We decided to drive throughout the evening so at 7.30 we stopped to cook dinner at the side of the road which happened to be opposite a police station. We had our four ringed gas hob, five people in a rather small space and ridiculously we managed to concoct the most efficient and best tasting meal we had throughout the whole of our New Zealand experience! Pudding would have taken us a little too far so we stopped at McDonald's in order to get a McFlurry. The girl had never heard of a McFlurry much to our disgust so we had to settle for a hot fudge sundae. The first chosen spot for sleeping, next to New Zealand's version of the M25 wasn't the best, and after preparing and getting into bed Rich decided he could no longer bear it. 30 minutes later, after mistaking someone's house for a village hall, Rich and Laura finally decided to stop on a hill next to a common and the public toilets. Perfect! We did a whistlestop tour of the Bay of Plenty stopping at Mount Manghanui, the Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cave. And yes, the hot water beach really was a hot water beach. If you dug in the right place you would come across underwater springs that bubbled out water at 60 degrees. Another night of freedom camping led us to a residential street in which we parked amongst many family cars! Although our New Zealand guide said that the campsites weren't too far from the city centre, it turned out that they would be a pretty expensive taxi ride! After paying for the grotty campsite and getting the campervan stuck in the mud, we decided that actually it would be more worthwhile staying in a hotel in the city. We paid for two rooms, thinking we could sneak the fifth person into one of the rooms only to find the room was barely bigger than the campervan. We then had the issue of trying to park the campervan somewhere that wouldn't cost too much which resulted in a 2 hour caravan parking spot hunt. After handbrake failure on a rather steep hill, Jim rolled into a car and quickly sped away leaving Laura and Rich in his dust. Eventually we found a car park and after narrowly missing the wall we were all ready for a few drinks. One of the bars we visited was "Minus 5" and the whole bar was made out of ice, including the cups that we drank our rather strong cocktails out of. At 5.30 the following morning, after going to bed at 2, Carrie got up to move the campervan that had to be out of the car park by 6. City car parks are not made for campervans as Carrie found whilst trying to exit the car park via the exit barrier. After coming to an abrupt halt, she was distressed to find she had wedged the van against a wooden outcrop. She proceeded to shout at the barrier man that there was no way the van was getting out through this barrier and he would have to raise the entrance barrier if he wanted her to leave. She then went back to bed and told Jim who did not believe her until we tried to get into the van later in the day and found that the side door was wedged shut. Access had to be gained via the passenger door! Whoops! At 9am we were finally on our way to skydive and the weather even looked pretty good! It was a very eventful day. Before anyone had even jumped out of a plane, Laura had her credit card snapped. Have you ever tried to snap a credit card in half? It's bloody difficult! Wanting to get it out of the way, Laura was first to jump and because of weather conditions was forced to jump from well above 12,000 feet. Unfortunately, it was raining. Falling at 200 km per hour through a raincloud hurts quite a lot and left Laura with a rather nice rash all over her neck! However, given that it was Laura's first extreme thing in New Zealand, she had a very good time! Carrie had a much better experience than her other extreme ventures and even with the backflip out of the plane, she said it was the one thing she would do again and again.
However, after all of this excitement, the day had marched on much quicker than we had intended. Suddenly, it was time for Jim and Martin to be at the airport and we were still at the airfield! We dashed back to Auckland as quickly as the rush hour traffic would allow us, grabbed the campervan and headed to the airport. Luckily, check in was still open and they had an hour until boarding. Tight like a tiger! Rich, Laura and Carrie were left with the campervan which was also late as it was supposed to be returned at 2pm! It took us a further hour to find the campervan drop off and we didn't get back to the city until much later, where the only thing that awaited us was packing!
Let us explain the living conditions in the campervan. Jim and Carrie slept above the cab in a rather damp cave, however this bed was there the whole time. Laura (a.k.a. Wifey) were forced to sleep together at the dining table which had to be assembled and dismantled every morning and evening. Martin had the privilege of his own company in a bed that although suggested in the specification was for two people, could really only fit one. Once this bed was up, there was no getting out for Rich and Laura but was the only way up and down for Jim and Carrie as with this bed out the ladder would no longer fit. We also had a serious condensation problem which meant that once in bed you could not touch any wall for fear of getting wet. This was made difficult as the beds were probably best compared to your standard single! Although we had a "bathroom" only the toilet was used and number twos were strictly forbidden! It still stank and we blame the boys. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all!!
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