hello all

the computer just froze and i had written loads, so here goes again!!

We are in Queenstown now, we left Hamner Springs pretty quickly the other night as had a few troubles with the vn. In the morning we woke up to find a brick had been thrown at our van the brick was on the floor and the dent is above the wheel arch on the back tyre. We took photos of it and have called up backpacker, we are fine as we are fully insured. But just very annoying and weird that we didnt wake up when it happened... we went in the spa during the day, and then treated ourselves to dinner that evening which was a nice change to noodles...then we went back to the spa in the evening, when we came out of the spa we noticed something missing from the van...our roll mats which were on the roof had been stolen. By this point we were very angry and ddint realy know what to do.. had to calm greg down and then we drove out of Hamner Springs. We drove until midnight, found a spot to camp in and went to bed very tired. In the morning we made the long journey up to Mount Cook. Didn't know what to expect when we got there, just huge mountains really, drove past two huge lakes that seemed never ending! And then there was a huge posh building, which is the Hermitage Hotel which has The Sir Edmund Hillary Centre attached to it... so we paid entry for the museum and had a look around. We then watched a 3-D movie on the history of Mount Cook and the Maori legend-will explain another time, takes ages!! that was good fun, then we watched the show in the planetarium, which was AWESOME. on different star clusters and how they appear upside down on this side of the world, which is cool. Learnt about our galaxy and how there are thousnads more out there, made us feel very tiny on out little planet. The whole show was really good, the actual screen is a big dome that tilts and spins around to give u a view of everything....

We stayed at the foot of the mountain and it was surprisingly warm...The next day we went for a walk, saw glaciers and heard lots of avalanches, then later saw the snow coming down from an avalanche-huge!!! we walked to the bottom of Mount Sefton which is on this picture up there...was a bit scary as we were where your not supposed to walk...so left when we heard avalanches!!There were small lakes that had big chunks of ice in that have fallen from the glaciers and also frozen over, lovely blue colour... We drove back to the Alpine Centre and i charged my phone without anyone realising and we sat in the lounge watching a movie, then walked out, just before the guard came around!!sneaky!!

The weather changed, so we left and made our way to Queenstown... So we'r back here. We have been to the newly opened leisure centre twice now. the first time we went we paid $6 each and we got to use everything even the slides. the next day we managed to fit 11 people into our van, these were some of jonny and lauras friends who all wanted to come to the pool. then they wanted to charge us $8 each to use the pool and a further $8each to go on the slides-WHAT!!greg and i went mental-saying we had only paid $6 yesterday and thats why we bought all of these people with us..but they werent having any of it!! BUT when we got in there we all sneaked onto the slides quite a few times-free of chargehahaha!!!!

This morning we changed our flights, and paid $50 each to change them...so know we leave New Zealand on Monday 9th June (instead of 16th June) and we will have 11 days in the Cook Islands...so hopefully we'l be a bit warmer and wont have to spend as much money as here...because if we want to do something in the day here we have to pay...to either use the internet, or go to a cafe, the cinema, mini golf, the pool-anything really, or we'r stuck in the van. so at least in the Cook Islands we can lay on the beach for free :D so we are both happier about that.... may treat ourselves to a movie (even though it costs!!) but we havent driven anywhere and are still eating noodles to save money!!!!!

So all in all things are better, means we cant ski though as need to drive to christchurch to take back the van, and is quite far from Queenstown,but greg reckons there isnt that much snow as it keeps melting, and i think everyone is getting ready for that first day when they do open, so i reckon the slopes will be packed...so i'd rather wait til next year!!

Love to all...and the countdown has started...20days now :)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx