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Friday 8th April
We left Wellington pretty early this morning to get the Ferry over to the South Island. The three hour ferry crossing went really quickly, mainly because I was fast asleep most of the way!! We arrived at Picton at midday to gorgeous sunshine and hills galore! Our first stop on the south island was a little cafe in the middle of a popular walking area - Perlorus Reserve. We had some amazing fish and chips and an ice cream from there which were seriously good!! We then drove into Nelson and to Ferm Lodge where we were staying that evening. The hostel was really nice and was a pub and a hostel which meant we didnt have far to walk to get a drink! lol. We then walked to the centre point of New Zealand which was a 30 minute walk from our hostel, with the weather being really nice, we managed to take loads of nice photos. Back at the hostel we saw the couple who were in our room on the first night of Wellington again and played cards with them for a bit. As it was Guy and Ben's last night with the group we got a couple of drinks in and started playing som drinking games. The first game we played was 'Chickens put your headsets on' which had me in fits of giggles and stopped me being able to breath and some points! The second game was 'Zimmie, Zimmie' which got very complicated and Georgia was rubbish at it, whilst Ben was hillarious as he really got into it. Final game was the Jack's hand slapping game which several people were pretty bad at. Over all our first night on the south island was lots of fun, but a bit sad when we lost the boys who were staying on in Nelson longer than everyone else.
Saturday 9th April
Today we were informed that on Sunday night we were having a Fancy Dress Party at the hostel we stay at that night. The theme had been set to 60s/70s, so we stopped off at a small shoppin centre to stock up on food and get fancy dress stuff. The person that wins the fancy dress wins a free Canyon Swing so we thought it was worth putting some effort in (plus being at lufbra taught us to always take fancy dress seriously!! lol). The next place we stoipped was Lake Rotoiti for lunch which was a really picturesque lake with lots of hungry ducks trying to steal our food! When we got to the hostel we got ourselves a bit organised and spent the rest of the night chilling out and making our costumes. We made hippie signs out of bandanas we bought and i sewed them onto some plain white t-shirt Jack had brought with him frm home. i also stitched a flower to the front of my cut up top and we wrote loads of hippie words all over them (told you we put some effort in!!) lol. The hotel we stayed at was Basil's hostel which was located in Westport. Quite a quiet little town but nice non the less.
Sunday 10th April
Today our Destination is the 'Poo Pub' for the fancy dress party. Our first stop was for a walk around a coastline famous for it's seal watching Tauranga Bay. It was about an hour round walk and thankfully we did spot some seal cubs moving around on the rocks which was really cool. We also saw some really good views of the coast as we were walking which made it a worthwile early morning walk. After that we stopped at another Lake to get some photos - as it was a bit overcast , it wasn't as good as some of the the other places but it was still worth a picture or two! We then stopped at Greymouth for some last minute fancy dress buying and for some supermarket shopping for the next few days. We finally arrived at Lake Mahinapua aka 'Poo Pub' to be greeted by Les, the 85 year old owner wearing a flatcap full of badges and a massive white beard. He was pretty scary but obviously really nice as well. We got into our demountable, challet type rooms which were pretty hilarious and made last minute adjustments to our costumes. With Happy Hour between 6 and 7, we decided to pretty much start drinking straight away. Dinner was cooked for us that night as part of the price we paid to stay there and it was incredible! We had steak, vennison stew, jacket potato and four types of salad, pasta, coleslaw etc - everyone was seriously loving it. We headed to the pub about 9pm and it was brilliant, it had hundreds of caps from different countries and places hanging down from the ceiling (you couldn't actually see the proper ceiling at all!) and all of our group looked really good and were properly into being hippies! After many many drinking games a few people starting getting a bit worse for wear and Bryanna (one of the candian girls we've made friends with) started being sick which is never good news! We called it a night about 1ish after an amazing night of fun and giggles.
Monday 11th April
This morning with hangovers descending our destination was Franz Josef where we stopped for two nights. Our first stop on the way was the Bushman Centre in a town called Pukekura which has a population of 3 people which is actually on sale for $1,000,000 which is about 500,000 pounds! It was basically a museum which had a video about how deer hunting has evolved in New Zelanad and how people make their living from it. They also had a brown and albino possom which are now known as pests in New Zealand as they eat the forest quicker than it can regenerate. They also had two massive pigs, goats, red deer and a wallaby. We then stopped at Pancake Rocks where when the tide is high it was a good view of the blowholes, we also saw some good views of all the rocks and waves crashing into the side. We finally headed to Franz Josef and the Rainforest hostel which was more like a holiday camp as there was a free 15 person hot tub to use all the time as well as a restaurant and bar area. That nights there was a Killer Pool competition which Jack ended up winning! the Prize was a free white water rafting trip and second prize was 5 luge runs both in queenstown. Since we had already been white water rafting, Jack offered to swap his prize with the second placed guy who couldnt believe his luck! P.s. Killer Pool is a game where you have 3 lives and people take it in turns to try and pot a ball. Everytime you don't pot a ball you lose a life. The last person with a remaining life is the winner!
Tuesday 12th April
Today was the Franz Josef Galcier Walk. We got kitted out with over trousers, waterproof jacket, hat and gloves, boots, socks and clampons (to use on the ice). We then headed to the start of the Glacier walk and got split into groups from 1 to 5 depending on fitness. We decided to put ourselves in group 2 and our guide was called Tobias. QWe walked up a ;arge mountain of rocks before putting our clampons on for the first section of ice. We trekked for a couple of hours through crevasses and up steep slopes where tobias had to cut steps into the ice using a pick axe and attached ropes to the sides of the ice to assist us up. We then stopped in the middle of a (sort of) flat piece of ice to have lunch which was really surreal! After lunch Tobias decided that we would be the second ever group to attempt to pass through a ridiculously this crevasse where you could only fit one foot in front of the other with both shoulders touching the sides. Half way through Jack got stuck (due to his large muscular legs (!)) and it took a few minutes for him to wiggle his way out. During this time we were wall getting soaked from the constant sripping from the walls of the crevasse! After getting fairly high up the glacierand 5 hours of trekking, we turned round to take a different route down the glacier. We were so lucky with the weather as we had glorious sunshine all day and in most of the pictures we got the ice is bright white and the sky is bright blue which is pretty cool. We got back to the hostel and were understandably pretty knackered so decided to treat ourselves to the backpacker meals in the restaurant. We decided to play the Mr and Mrs game with the four girls and the two canadians which turned out to be hilarious! Jack and I got 2 out of 4 so it wasn't horrendous. Lola and Georgia won but they went first so we reckon we gave them easier questions!
Wednesday 13th April
this morning we had to get on the bus for 7.30am as we had 300km to travel today before arriving in Wanaka. Our first stop was a walk to a lake that on a clear day you could get a perfect reflection of Mount Cook. Unfortunately it was overcast that morning so we decided to cut our losses and chill in their nice cafe instead! We had loads of random photo stops as well today which had some pretty cool scenery. I think i;'ve become a but immune to the amazing views as we're travelling along! I'm sure it'll hit me once i've left just how picturesque New Zeleand really is! We got to Base hostel in Wanaka in the afternoon so still had enough time to have a little look around. The Lake was two mintues from the hostel and so so pretty, our driver reckoned it is one of the most popular places to live in NZ due to the scenery. That night we went down to the bar attached to the hostel which was really nice but absolutely dead. The pool table was free to use there so we got a couple of games in before the killer pool competition started which i took part in for the first time! Unfortunately neither of us won but out mate Aaron did which was good. Becuase we also started running the competition ourselves coz the staff were unbelievably slow there, they brought over some free jugs of cider and beer to drink which was pretty sweet!
Thursday 14th April
This morning ourr first stop was puzzleworld which we had heard some pretty ccool things about. It had the world's first 4D maze and you had to get to every corner to complete it. Sounds easy but it was ridiculously hard! We eventually managed to complete it but it did take a while!they also has an illusion room which had pictures that tried to confuse you and hollograms that changed depending on where you were standing. They also had a room of famous faces that were carved intio the wall that looked like they followed you around the room. They also had a tilted room which madeyou feel ridiculously dizzy and they made water run down a pipe attached to the wall even though the begining looked lower down the wall than the end of the stream! The best room of all was the special effects room. They apparently use this technique in Lord of the Rings and it basically allows someone to look into a room through a window which appears to be a standard room but if one person stands at each far corner of the room, the person on the left looks like a giant and the person on the right looks tiny! As you can imagine ithis place made me so excited as they had lots of tricky mind puzzles in the reception to play with which i could have spent hours in! The next place we headed to was one of the AJ Hackett Bungy sites called the Kawarau Bridge. It was originally built to help miners reach quuenstown but it's now celebrated as the first commercially operated Bungy site in the world. There we watcched a video about the history of bungy jumping before booking ourselves to do the Nevis Bungy and the Nevis Arc Swing! We also go to watch a few people jump off the bridge which made Jack feel pretty confident but made me even more scared!! We then headed to Queenstown and into Nomad's hostel where we were staying for 3 nights. This was also our last place with the main group we had made as everyone was heading out of Queenstwon at different dates. That night we cooked in, had a few drinks in the room (we were sharing with Masie and Aaron and the team canada) and then headed to a place called World Bar for some free drinks and we all sat down to chat to a guy called James from our new bus. We found out that he is a third assistant director and has worked on Batman, the dark knight, inception, sherlock holmes and had turned down working on the katest batman so he could continue travelling! He was one of those people you could talk to for hours about who he's met and all the different aspects of his job although he did insist that it wasn't all glamourous and cool! We also saw some of the girls from our first bus who had some brilliant stories to fill us in on since we'd last seen them. The DJ that started he's set soon after basically did the whole hour set beat boxing which was really good but towards the end did start to bore people so a lot of people started to move on to other places. Since we had the bungy the next day we decided not to go too crazy and called it a night about 12/1.
Friday 15th April - Bungy Day!
We all had a lay in this morning and we had to be at the bungy office in Queenstown at 11 for our jump around midday! The Nevis site was about 45 mintues away, with the last 5 mintues ip this ridiculously steep and narrow path whhich got you used to how high up the site was! As we ended up being the only two doing both the Arc Swing and the Bungy Jump we got to choose which one we wanted to do first. We decided tio do the Arc Swing first as Rachel and Anna were also doing it and so we would be able to watch each other which was bound to be funny! Jack and I went first when we got to the Arc pod. The Nevis Arc is basically a 70m freefall before being sung 300m and it is the biggest swing in the world. I decided to sit forward while jack decided to face backwards. The guys harnessed us up and placed us in the sitting positions before hauling us out away from the platforrm so we were suspended about 200m up from the valley floor! It was then down to the guide to press a button which released us and started the freefall. The moment he pressed it my heart actually dropped and after the first second the next 3 seconds of freefall were absolutely awesome and Jack and I couldn't stop laughing. We were then dangling in the air for about 5 minutes while we were getting carried back to the platform. We then wqatched the girls go which was hilarious as their faces were brilliant and it definately looked terrifying watching other people drop so we were glad we went first! Our next challenge was the Bungy Jump which was off a caable car in the middle of a valley and which i was absolutely terrified of! We got transported over ito it using a mini cable car which didnt have any walls or windows! We then got into the big jumoing cable car and the system they use for jumpers is by wieght order as they don't have to keep swapping the bungy jump ropes around as much if they use the weight system. As i was the only girl in that particular group i knew there was a good chance that i would be last to jump as they jump the heaviest to lightest people in that order, which meant i had quite a while to get even more nervous. On the other hand Jack's name got called and he was sat in the chair to get ready for his jump straight away. Before i knew it, he was jumping off and bouncing around below! I had to wait for another 3 or 4 people to jump before i could. One of the guides was trying to wind me up as well as he could tell i was the most anxious which was pretty funny. I then got called to sit in the chair where they connect your legs together and most importantly the rope to you! They then stand you up and shuffle you to the edge, where i didnt look didn't look down once, they then said "3-2-1-See you" and i jumped, obviously screamed massively and got the best rush ever, it was actually incredible! I thought the bouncing bits were going to be really rough as well but they were actually really smooth and enjoyable! After your second bounce up they ask you to pull a red piece of material to the side of you which is supposed to put you in the sitting position for when you are pulled up. Unfortunately i couldn't pull mine hard enough so got pulled back to the top upside down which actually wasnt that bad as I was still buzzing from the jump. Wehn i actually got back to onto my feet i was over the moon that i managed to jump and the guides said that i really went for it and did an amzing jump! Once back at the hostek we showed the others my bungy video and again treated ourselves to dinner at a Pizzeria in Queenstown which had really yummy food for pretty reasonable prices. It was also very busy in there which is usually a good sign! When we got back we headed to the dining room/common room and played the usual drinking games which ended up in maisie and Aaron racing each other to win a toilet card in the common room and Aaron pulled Maisie's top down by accident and they both ended up on the floor so we decided that would be a good place to finish the games and head out! We first went to the Altitude Bar where they had KY Jelly wrestling competition happening which Maisie decided to sign up for! She had to wrestle two other girls for their socks to win but the other two girls were friends so basically double teamed Masie which was slightly unfair. The night was pretty good but all the others bailed out on us so it didnt end up being too much of a late one!
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