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Hey all.
Sorry not to finish this sooner but been busy/lazy, I have things to do you know, important man perhaps. I'm not, but you never know. I'm currently sat in a slightly eerie roadside overnight camp site on the outskirts of Rockhampton in OZ with far too many caravans that probably aren't adverse to a mild bit of dogging at the weekends,but more on OZ later, for now, the final of New Zealand.
After the immense skydive we continued down south still following the west coast. Passing though lake takepo and several other large lakes around this area heading for Queenstown. These were all very pretty, mountains rising straight out of the lake.we stopped briefly for the view but we were needing to keep on the move for time restraints.
Shortly we arrived in Queenstown for the day (we were coming back to catch our plane later so no need to spend too long here) and we had one main goal, to once again fall through the sky on the Nevis bungee. We spent the day tottering around the shops, catching up on some admin, and eventually went on the gondala to the top of a mountain/ski range that overlooks the whole city and lakes and mountains etc. Queenstown, like a lot of new Zealand, is another amazingly pretty place, just there are people living here unlike most of NZ. View from the top of the gondala is awesome, and had a jolly old time up here. Later we went to an ice bar.basically a bar where everything inside is made of ice(the bar, stools, tables, glasses etc etc). It was rather cold seeing as you are just sat on a block of ice in a large freezer but an interesting concept.
This brings us onto the next day and the Nevis bungee. Background: the Nevis bungee is 134 meters high, second highest in the world, and you jump from a platform suspended I a sort of cable car that's suspended between 2 mountains on a large wire. I jumped, was a lot shorter than the skydive but with a lot less pain and cold. Skydive and bungee are very different and both great in their own ways. The one thing I will say about my bungee is the difference in jumping. Skydive I was tandum so was pretty much pushed out of the plane, I had very little control and did mean I was slightly less fearful. Bungee, it was all down to me. They get you to totter along to the edge of the platform so your toes are hanging off, and you have no choice but to look down and see nothing for a very long way, then its up to you to make the jump (a lass before me took several minutes to make the actual jump). This is one of my prouder moments but also a s*** scary one. I took the opinion that the longer I stood there the more my mind might interfere and remind me it was not a good idea, therefore as soon as the countdown ended I just sort of fell off the end he and hoped for the best. It worked and was awesome.
From Queenstown we headed to milford sound (which is actually a fiord not a sound) and went on a boat trip around there. It wasn't the best of days but the sights were still pretty spectacular, mountains rising straight out of the sea. Soon though on our way east for the first time. We decided to go to Invercargill just so could say have been there and been to the main southern point. Not much here besides a run down fishing town. Since they are famous for oysters tried some of those, they were disgusting, I am not an oyster man, and it took me far longer to pick up the courage to eat one of the slimey b*****s than it did to jump the bungee. But never the less, the deed was done. Walked around here for a while getting to the most southern point we could.
Moving on we headed back up North, stopping at some of the lakes again and doing some walks around d there, very pretty as always. We went into the mount cook national park later on, walked one of the valleys and got some decent views of the mountain, plus some more gflacierrs and wotnot, and then made our way back across to Christchurch.
Christchurch is rubble. The earthquakes happened 2 years ago and I was well aware there were still repaisprs going on but I hadn't realised the extent. I assumed that it would be all the suburbs still being repaired whilst the city would be business as usual but the city is just nothing. Shops have taken up residence in shipping containers in one of the safe areas, which actually looks pretty funky, but 2 thirds is still just buildings either boarded up as being unsafe or are a pile of rubble after being demolished. There is still just nothing functioning there, it is a disaster zone., despite this everyone seems quite Cherry's and I got an excellent Greek lamb wrap something thing from one of the shipping containers. This sadly marked the end of our time wwith Rosie, we handed the van back as soon as we were in Christchurch (they thankfully didn't notice the new huge chip on the windscreen or the fact the parking mirror was shattered,both not our fault).
From here caught a bus back across to Queenstown for another night which involved interesting drinks and lots of Australian uni students pretending to be Scottish for some reason, anyways. This then left us to get our plane to Auckland. We arrived at 6pm. Our next flight to OZ was not until 7am the next morning. The cost of the bus into the city, plus the cost of a hostel for the night seemed a lot for how little we would actually be there so we instead opted to sleep the night on the floor of the airport. This was not a good nights sleep, but at least wasa financially sound solution. The next day, after Paul had resolved a disagreement about his visa, we were on a plane again and headed for OZ. One day I might even write the next update, if I survive all the spiders, snakes, alligator's, box jellyfish and everything else that seems to be out to kill me in this country.
Until then, much lave all
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