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Going over the Haast Pass was magnificenrt but then everything is in NZ so you're probs bored of that.
We stopped off in Wanaka which is a little skiing town by a lake, mini Queenstown, which was nice and not so pretentious. Still full of skiier bums though. So all you can do in that neck of the woods is go skiing so that's what we did. We decided to go up Cadrona because it was the cheapest mountain to get all your lift pass and hire and lessons etc.
We drove out in dear old Betsie on this dodgy pot-holed road to the bottom of Cadrona and camped there. It was bloody freezing. The next day we stupidly decide that we could get up the mountain in Betsie with no snow chains. We picked up a hitch-hiker and made it very nearly to the top but then there was snow (what do you know? at the top of a mountain you say?) and so we turned around and went back down and dropped of our snow boarding hitch hiker and hitched ourselves. (The hitch hiker was very laid back so he wasn't peeved - at least we hope not!)
This was the first time we had ever been skiing so we had a couple of lessons and by the end of the day we got the chair lift (Kate lost her pole as she ran out at the last minute to jump on the stair lift, the operator was not impressed) and we went down the begginners' slope. Kate went super fast and thought she was going to fall off the mountain as she still hadn't learnt how to slow down or stop and took a bit of a fall but apart from that we were practcally pros. We also looked super cool in our over-sized rental equipment with braces on our ski pants and librarian glasses sraps holding on our sunnies so we didn't have to get goggles. If you wanna do skiing on the cheap, go to cadrona! Trouble is you have to get to new Zealand first.
The next day Kate ached like crazy and Laura nursed her bruises as we drove to Queenstown (NZ's andrenalin junky sports capital) where with an aching back kate found herself talked into doing a tandem bungy jump at the world's original bungy jump site.
When we got up to the platform the guys thought we were just doing single jumps and so Laura said "Oh that's fine, we'll just jump separately" much to Kate's horror. Kate was having none of it and said "oh will we now Laura? i'm not jumping without you!". So we got to jump together. The thing with bungy jumping is that you have to do what feels totally unnatural and make yourself jump. So that's why we wanted to do it together because then somebody else is kind of dragging you off anyway if you don't jump and you can't have all that faffing where you say "I can't do this" as you have to jump together after a countdown. Anyway it was brilliant and worth it. Kate might have blown Laura's ear drum screaming. Laura prefered it to sky diving but Kate prefered skydiving.
After that little andrenalin thrill we decided it was time for another to get our kicks and so went up the gondala to a mountain that overlooks Queenstown and the Luge (which is like the ice version but on wheels) a few times. It was a great cheap thrill, the cheapest you'll find in Queenstown.
Queenstown pretty much marked the end of our andreanlin/ extreme activites in NZ and since our budget was slipping we had a more sober last week. Apart form getting trashed that is. We drove the spectacular drive to Milford Sound and this was the time Laura's second video camera of the trip decided to die and mine was still broken so we had no camera in one of the most beautiful places in the world so no pics of that I'm afraid! We took a boat trip out onto the Sound and although it was raining we apparently went on a "dry day". The sounds were over a km high but because of the dwarfing effect its hard to appreciate just how huge they are but you realise afterwards you've spent the whole time craining your neck to look up to the top.
From Milford Sound we drove back to Te Anu which is the nearsest town and decided to relax with some beers after all the driving. We met a group of Aussies and they had a bottle a Jeigermeister and you can guess the rest. We ended up drinking nearly a whole bottle between 3 of us and Laura was so drunk she started protesting to Kate as she was trying to get her to sit up as she was being sick "kate, I wanna throw up in Queenstown kate, let me throw up in Queenstown, I'm in a casual zone Kate, it's a casual zone". I suspect this was some sort of allusion to skiing but can't be sure!
The next day we took it easy and had a little picnic by the lake. (Laura couldn't face the leftover veggie sausage pasta she had thrown up the night before). We then just drove to Gore which is the starting point to visit the Catlins from, an area right at the South of the South Island of outstanding natural beauty.
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