We arrived in Christchurch airport quite late so we got the shuttle staright to our hostel, where we checked in for 2 nights. the room was absolutely freezing, and they wouldnt even give us an extra blanket! v.mean!! we didnt really doi naything in the day we had in christchurch, it was kinda like a ghost town, quite a big place with loads of shops, but there was absolutely no people anywhere, quite strange!

We had an early start the next morning as we had our first experience on the magic bus , we had a woman called rachael as our driver and guide, and she was really lovely! our first stop was Kaikora where we stayed at Duskey Lodge. We were there just before lunch so we had the afternoon to go and check out the local seal colony and go for a bit of a bike ride! we were only there for that one night though, and we headed off to Nelson the next morning.

We stayed in Paradiso which was a really cool hostel, that even gave us free soup in the evenings, which is just what we wanted after having been walking all day in the Abel Tasman National Park, we stayed there for 2 nights so that we could do the full 13K walk. we caught the water taxi to the park then walked back to where the bus picked us up from. the views on the walk were pretty spectaculor, the water was so blue, was awseome!

next stop on the bus route was Greymouth, which is supposedly the largest town in the south after Christchurch. There was abvsolutely nothing to do there though, apart from the traditional Monteiths brewrey tour that we did in the evening, tried all the beers even their version of guiness which i siuprisingly liked! we styayed in Noahs ark hostel, which was unique in the fact that all the rooms in the hostel where decorated by a different animal, we had requested to stay in the pig room. which had posters of pigs, little cuddly pigs and pink bunk beds and duvets, very cool!

Next day was back on the bus to Franz Josef. this time on the bus we had a few stops along the way, Hokitika which is famous for greenstone, and Ross where we had the chance to pan for gold. we stayed in Chateau Franz which is actually one of the nicest hostels i think we've stayed in for a while, and again free soup!! we ended up staying there for a few nights, due to the weather, we got snowed in! which wasnt neccesarliy a bad thing. the day after we went on the glacier hike, lucy was feeling adveturous so went for the full day whereas me and carly opted for the 3/4 day, meaning we got a lie in in the mornming! We had Rhino and Jason as our guides, which we thought was funny, and no it wasnt the gladiator!! the hike wasnt as much of a killer as we were expecting, we did have to hike up and up the glacier but we had crampon on our shoes which made it a lot easier! at lunch time though the weather started to get quite bad, really heavy snow, and mine and carlys choc bars were frozen solid!! was so cold when we stopped thiough i was really glad when we started walking again! after a few more hours we did get the call to turn back though as the weather was deemed too bad! apparently the worst snow in 8 years!! the walk back was fun though, we got to slide through crevasses and crawl through ice caves then slide down them! very fun!

The next day we all went Kayaking down at the river which had amazing views of the glacier and the mountains, lucy and i decided to double up and found out that it ios actually alot easier to steer with a rudder!

Finally the next day we managed to get on the bus and head to Queenstown as the road had reopened( theres only one road into queenstown and it had been closed due to the ice and snow!!) we stayed for a week in Queenstown, such a cool place, and was full of people as the roads had opened and it was winterfest, which was a big celebration of the snow basically with loads of fireworks, very cool! whilst in queenstown we went skiing for a few days, which was an experience first time skiing! was actually quite suprised, only fell over once on the first day and that wasnt even my fault, some guy skied straight into me! and by the end of the first day could actually do snow plough turns all the way down the slope, very impressed with myself ! lol did get to go on the chair lift as well which i only fell off of once! all in all actually loved skiing def gonna do it again, esp as i know what im doing now! kind of! lol

when we eventually dragged ourselves away from queenstown we headed up to Dunedin, pretty much as soon as we got there we headed staright off to the Cadburys choc factory for a tour, and some free choc! thats all there was really to do in Dunedin so the next day we headed staright up to Lake Tekapo . on the way we stopped at the worlds steepest street, Baldwin street, and went for a walk along the beach to see the Moeraki boulders, then we headed up to Benmore Dam which is apparently the largest dam in the southern hemisphere! very exciting!!! we did have a photo stop at Mt cook, but unfortunately it was a bit cloudy so we actually couldnt see mt cook at all!! lol the last stop of the day was Secret spot X which was actually the Church of the good shepard. We finally arrived at the hostel, which was in a really beautiful setting! right on the lake front. That evening we all headed up to the local ice rink which had only just opened that week, very entertaining! lol

After Tekapo we headed back round to Christchurch where we said goodbye to Carly!! was quite emotional! then back round to Kaikora then on to Picton to catch the ferry up to Wellington in the North Island!