Since the last blog- and I can't really remember where that finished- we have visited the capital of New Zealand, Wellington. I think it's a bit strange that this is the capital as everyone has heard of Auckland and Christchurch but not Wellington!! It's a nice place- very windy though! We did a visit to their museum where we did a time warp ride where you are taken 50 years in the future and see that bikes fly in the sky and stuff like that. It's basically all flashing flights and then a simulator ride- but one part was like a giant eye toy where we stodd in front of a green screen and they made it look like you were flying, and having a skiiing race which was all quite fun!

We also took a cable car up to the botanical gardens while we were there, which was nice but we did it at the wrong time of year really as there were hardly any flowers in bloom.

We also had guy fawkes night while we were there, which I didn't think they celebrated but they put on a good fireworks display on the water front, including a plane which dragged fireworks through the sky, setting them off as they were flying above!!

We then caught the interislander ferry and made our way to the South island. We went straigt to kaikoura where we did some whale watching and saw two sperm whales! We were lucky as the group before us didn't see any. they re really difficult to take pics of as you can only see the top of the their back, but it is impressive when they dive back down and you see their tails.

On the way back around the top of the south island, we stopped for about 40 mins in Blenheim and had a few moments for Birdie.

We then continued our journey to Nelson, the hottest place in New Zealand. The first half day was spent exploring the town. We also met our dorm-mate, Helen, who was booked to do the same Abel Tasman national Park walk as su, so the next day we hung around with her on the walk. The walk was supposed to be 4 hours long but seeing that we started at 11:30 and finished just before 5 I think it was a bit longer! It was a really nice walk though, getting quite high up over the park. The walk takes you around the very edge, and sometimes the path gets quite thin and with many stones sticking out so if you take your eye off the path and trip (which we all did) it was very close to slidding down towards the sea! (a long fall indeed!!) We had very weary feet when we finished, but felt good for doing it. Today we plan on going to a fashion art museum and then tomorrow we shall make our way to greymouth and then to Franz Josef- so more updates then!!