Well it has come to the end of our time in New Zealand and we had to say goodbye to our campervan which was a thoroughly daunting prospect if you could see all the junk stuffed in the back of it!!!!

Did some amazing stuff in New Zealand....we skydived over the Abel Tasman national park (14 000 feet...it was incredible!), did an ice hike in the pouring rain which might have been really good had we not turned into glaciers ourselves...  After that we headed down to Queenstown which is where people do all the crazy adrenalin activities....met up with Dobbin there for a few days and had some entertaining nights out as well as hitting some grade 5 rapids with him in the raft using his cambridge rowing motivation techniques.  We weren't insane enough to do a bungy jump but we did go and watch one of our friends do one which was sufficient....!

Speaking of the friend, these were acquaintances of Dobbin's who tagged along with us to Milford Sound and sat in the back of the campervan the whole way (about 9 hours driving in total) and were still alive at the end of it despite lots of flying objects that seemed to be falling off the towel rails.  Don't think they were that impressed to come face to face with our bikinis!  They kept us entertained on the way back however as they are mobile DJs at home so they were delighted to find some classic tunes on my ipod (claire was less than impressed when they started to play them however...).

We also learnt to snowboard though claire seems to have a much more natural ability at the sport than sarah who "liked going backwards" the whole way down the piste, honest...!

After leaving Queenstown we went up to Mt Cook which was stunning and then on up to Kaikoura where we went swimming with the dolphins...dont think either of us were expecting the water to be so cold however so we headed straight to some thermal springs afterwards to defrost.  Unfortunately the scenic relaxing treat we were expecting from the springs never materialised as it turned out to be the school holidays so it was more like being in the public swimming baths at home.

 Finally we went down to Christchurch where the weather was pants (again!) and we spent the last couple of days sightseeing and making jewellry (which we will expect lots of positive comments about when we get hime, naturellement...!).  Next stop Melbourne...bring on the sunshine...!