After a few alcoholic refreshments in Queenstown to warm the cockles, we stumbled across a bar called Minus 5. The bar is basically a giant freezer with ice sculptures where the only drink on offer is Vodka....So we kitted up in our Eskimo outfits and headed in. A few cocktails later, we were asked to leave for "Health and Safety reasons". Apparently it is only safe to stay in a -9C environment for 30 minutes.... If we'd have known, we would have had a few more and spent less time chatting to the bar man about bungy.

The following morning, we headed to the Bird Sanctuary, to see a Kiwi. It's the weirdest thing we've ever seen. Like a cat with a beak. Weird.

Then we headed up the Sky-Rail to the lookout point. The views were stunning, and Queenstown looked more like Switzerland than somewhere in NZ. We had a few goes on a Luge track which was great fun (in the snow), and also watched an American Lad fling himself off a platform, which put us off doing anything similar.

The following day, we headed for the Glaciers which took the whole day to drive, but it was worth it to wake up to breath-taking views of Fox Glacier. We walked round Lake Matheson to get a mirror image of the views, we then checked in for our first adventure, a helicopter flight.

The flight was 40 minutes and took us firstly over Franz Josef glacier, round the peak of Mount Cook (about 3.4km) round Mount Tasman, then we landed on Fox Neve before heading over the glacier and back to base. The whole thing was wonderful, especially the landing, where we had a snowball fight and took some brilliant pictures.

After lunch, we took part in a hike up the glacier. The first hour of the trek was through Rainforest and making our way to the side of the glacier for entry. Parts of the track were white knuckle, one particular part being a metre wide path with a chain attached to the wall with a 250 metre sheer cliff on the other. However, it was worth the effort and once we had strapped our crampons on, the fun started. The guide took us through the lower section of the glacier to gullys and crevasses. It was great as well to hear the history and geology of the location. After an hour on the ice, we headed back. the return trek being worse than the way up!

We then headed for Franz Josef for the night. This morning, we awoke to freezing conditions, on the inside of the windscreen of the speed wagon!! However, after a long drive up the coast (past Pancake Rocks), we are now in the Buller Gorge which seems to be slightly warmer. This afternoon, we walked across NZ's longest swing bridge and then came back via zip-line which was good fun.

Tommorow, we head for Kaikoira, hopefully there will be a few Whales about. Then on to the North Island for part 2 of the NZ adventure....