Well, I suppose it had to happen. Sporadic exercise, junk food while driving 1200 kilometres, eating out nearly every night, lack of fruit and veg, getting my feet wet in glacial melt - but most of all (I suspect) moving from tropical climes to winter in a 12 hour period. Yes, I have a dirty, rotten, stinking cold - I'm sitting in an internet cafe with my nose dripping - lovely. There's an advert for tamiflu outside - can I just buy it? Should I just buy it?

Instead, my patented southern hemisphere cure is: spicy Thai food, several beers, lemsip, and an early night. And then get up four hours later to watch Newcastle get relegated. Marvellous. I'm going to be a bag of spanners come check-out time tomorrow...

The decision to take a tour to Milford Sound was a good one - I think the driving would have been a (one lane) bridge too far. The Sound was amazing - although Mike, a trainee doctor from Birmingham articulated my thoughts when he said he was starting to suffer from scenery fatigue. I could do with a few factories or high rise estates to give me back some point of comparison - aw, poor me!

Anyway, I took over 200 photos so some of them had better be good. Milford Sound has been voted the #1 Kiwi experience, and understandably so. I don't think I really grasped the scale of it properly - I was very sceptical when the guide said that one of the waterfalls was three times higher than Niagara, and that an overhang was higher than the Empire State Building - get onto Google Earth, dad, and let me know if he was exaggerating! And hello to Terry Ford as well - say hi to Liz for me.

I only have a couple of days left in NZ and I've barely scratched the surface - TCal if you're reading (and happy birthday around now if you are?), I know you tried to explain it but I think even photos don't really help comprehension, you just have to come here. I definitely want to come back.

Tomorrow - off to Dunedin, missing out Invercargill and a large part of the Southern Scenic Route. Another excuse to come back though :-)

Right, off for my lemsip, early night, and COME ON THE TOON!!!