Ive been in New Zealand for just over 2 weeks and its been a total whirlwind! started off slowly with carly and i getting our bearings in auckland and then we headed north to the bay of islands for some rainforest walks, coach drive along 90 mile beach (which is actually 86 miles) and sandboarding- so much fun bascially bodyboarding but down a very steep sand dune - definiately a must for everyone! that was the beginning of my extreme sports!! we headed back down to auckland where we met up with two of my friends from my ski season - gina and gemma - it was so great to see them for a good catchup! we then met our group that we would be travelling with, with the kiwi experience, for pretty much the rest of our time in NZ! really great bunch of people - comprising of the four corners of the UK except scotland and ranging from 19 to 25 - we all made friends immediatly and i now feel ive know them for a bout 6 months not 6 days (may be the many drinking sessions we've been having - they're always good to break the ice!!) The kiwi experience has been brilliant so far - seen so many places in quite a short space of time driven by our very funny driver Ginny - who is always up for anything!! My extreme sports have been added to, to include the flying fox - basically flying head first on a wire at 160 km an hour through a gorge - and SKY DIVING!!!! amazing!!!! its difficult to find a word to describe the feeling of plummeting to the earth for 45 secs (once youve got over the unbelievable feeling of fear of course!!) it was just amazing - def a must for everyone - young or old!! Well that pretty much takes me to the bottom of the north island and wellington in a nut shell! (there is just so much to tell but im trying to keep these entries briedf!) we spent a day in windy wellington- taking advantage of the chance of a lie-in and also visiting the museum which looks at bascially the whole of New Zealands history so as you can imagine it was huge so we only managed to look at one and half of the floors! but i felt i was atleast being a little bit cultural! Managed to drop my scarf at some point and realised just as we were leaving so had to run around the floors like a mad person as the museum was about to close looking for it - thankfully i had success! now onto the south island..... xxxx