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The adventures of Feather
Well hello from rainy chilly but a nontheless beautiful New Zealand. Apologies for the lack of correspondance but for the last 2 weeks or so myself, Wes, Rob and our trusty campervan Bet have been touring NZ. Setting off from Christchurch, a most English town with a cathedral, tea shops and constant drizzle to boot we set off to some outdoor thermal springs and soaked our souls in 40 degree pools with a snowy moutain backdrops. A good start eh!? We stopped to say hello to some big furry seals on the way and i jumped into a plane and flew over some sperm whales, pretty breathtaking. From there we raced up, well chugged, to the mountains, taking in the most spectacular scenery i have ever seen. Winding roads revealed moutain top, valley, forest and flocks of sheep after flocks of sheep. We tramped on the mountains and saw our first glacier, and took a few slippery tumbles on the icy pathways and breathed in the freshest air i have ever tasted. needless to say sleeping well in Bet has been no problem! We had tea breaks next to beautiful ice blue lakes backed with snow capped mountains and then arrived to a cave full of glow worms, floating quietly down the underground caves in tiny boats gazing at the ceiling as they flickered and glowed in total darkness. Incredible and really quite belittling. From there we travelled on to make a sunset of tiny penguins waddling over cliffs to their nest all chatting to each other as they strolled past us- was just brilliant to see them! Onward then to walk on the Franj Josef glacier which is an experience i will never forget, driving through the middle of the moutain side! I donned a lovely pair of oversized waterproof trousers and ice crampons and marched up the side of it! The views from the top were incredible and i felt truly blessed to be able to experience such a fantastic piece of nature! So onward through more Lord of the Rings territory, dodging sheep and cows in the roads to boat across Milford Sound, a wonderful fiord and have the luck of several dolphins following and jumping around our boat. Delightful and so many useless photos taken! They are speedy little blighters! From there we went onto race in a jet boat down a canyon which was pure adrenalin and i squealed like a little girl, and then the boys threw themselves off a platform on a bungee into a valley, i could only watch in horror, just being in the pod with them was enough to terrify me!! A hearty meal and much relaxing by big log fires whilst sampling the local wine was necessary to recover from that one!
New Zealand is blessed with the most incredible landscape i have ever seen, it is a geography teachers dream here! Canyons, rivers, hills, mountains, valleys, glaciers, thermal pools,volcanos..etc etc So we are now in the North Island after touring the wild and windy coastline ... the wild and windy continues but we have broken up the constant beauty- can you get too much of incredible views? and seen kiwis- enormous chicken like things but immediately prompted me to buy ridiculous kiwi style souvenirs- look out folks back home! and visited some stinking geysers and thermal rivers of sulphur and the like, incredible to experience but boy did they reek!! Anyway so the next few days leaves some exploring of Auckland and the area, a Maori festival of nose rubbing and scary haka dancing and then i am away to Fiji for some well deserved sunshine i think! Hope the heatwave continues at home, there have been moments of jealousy here on particular cold days but mostly the sun has shone as has this incredible wilderness of a country.
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