Day 18. After getting off the ferry, the South Island instantly was more appealing. Long windy roads covered the undulating fjordland. A misty haze covered this scenery, and it was at this point that New Zealand felt like the New Zealand that i had imagined.

Like Auckland, the moment we left Jack took us the wrong direction ...muppet! After my thorough and slightly ruthless rinsing of Jack we headed off in the right direction towards Nelson, our first stop off of the South Island. We arrived early afternoon and decided that we would book our sea kayaking in Abel Tasmine before we would look for accomadation. This was a mistake as it turned out that there was basically none! After a long search all day, we were geared up to sleep in the car, so we thought we would get a few beers and then call it a night. Fortunatly the first bar we came to told us that they had a few beds above the bar that we could stay in. We were relieved that we didn't have to sleep in the freezing car and thus accepted immediatly. Turns out the room was pretty rough, and covered in fleas. Unfortunatly we only discovered about the fleas upon inspection of our bite ridden legs the following morning. Apart from our accomadation, Nelson was a really nice. Very attractive little streets and a large young population, hence why it was so appealing to Jack and myself.

The next day, we took the car to a small town outside of Abel Tasmine, that really only consisted of one street. However, we did stay in a nice hostel where we met some Canadian lads, that we managed to piss of that night due to Jack losing the car keys. After a pretty epic search looking in every room of the hostel and even the garden keeping everyone in the room awake, Jack found the keys under his bag!

The next day we got up early, waking the Canadians again because today we were going to depart on a two day sea kayak of the Abel Tasmine National Park. After a brief introduction on safety and good stuff to see, we packed are clothes and camping equipment into out kayak. However, one thing we couldn't understand was why we managed to get all of our items in easily whilst everyone was struggling. We shrugged it off and set off on our trip. The trip was amazing, the sea was like crystal and the beaches were golden and deserted. We discovered lots of tiny bays and saw a sting-ray glide by. After a day of chilling, swimming and sunning we set up camp at a campsite in Anchorage. Unfortunately when we carries everything onto the beach, i managed to leave my spray guard and my life jacked on the beach, which was then stolen. Therefore i had to radio back to base and get new things sent out to me...idiot! However, things went from bad to worse, we realised why are canoe was easier to pack...we had packed no food! So for dinner and the next day we had two bananas and two apples each! The following ay we woke up tired and hungry, me being the more tired because of Jacks constant snoring all night which was sporadically halted by me kicking him in the head! Our bad moods, however, were rectified by the beautiful scenery and relaxed on the beach for three hours while we waited for the water taxi to pick us up. Exhausted and starving we went back to town to feed up on an English classic: fish and chips!

That night i got a call from a friend back home, Louise Gundry, saying that her and her friends arrived in New Zealand the previous day, and they were doing basically the same route as us at the same time on the Kiwi Experience (a tour bus). So the next day we drove to the West Coast to meet Louise in a tiny town called Westport. After meeting and getting a few drinks, Louise decided that she would join us on out road trip, and so the team was formed!

The following day we left early doors as we had to drive South down the coast to a small town called Greymouth. The drive was really impressive as it was rated in the top 10 scenic drives in the world. We arrived in Greymouth early afternoon, which Jack and I saw as the perfect opportunity to introduce Louise to the meal time wonder of Subway! After this we found our accomadation and when sitting in the room we saw all of Louise's friends on the Kiwi Experience bus, naturally i had to moony the bus! Louise was not happy! After getting everything sorted we went downstairs to the bar below the hostel and had a few drinks whilst watching the rugby, and then we met some randomers from the town including some old guy and a Japanese prostitute! After me destroying the 60 year old prostitute at pool the three of us went clubbing.

The following morning we woke up pretty hungover and after some cold left over sausage and mash we got back on the road heading to Franz Joseph. The small town was really beautiful as it was surrounded by a vast mountain range covered in enormous glaciers. However, once again we struggled to find accommodation. There was only one bed left in the whole town, naturally the girl had it; not that we gave Louise the bed, she took it! So as a result Jack and I slept in the car, which was actually wasn't too bad.

The next morning we got up early because Jack had to do his glacier climb and i was going to do the glacier flight. I drove to airport and waited for my flight whilst speaking to an elderly couple from Morden of all places! Eventually we got into the tiny plane with a capacity of seven and did the flight over various landforms including Mount Cook, Franz Joseph Glacier and also Fox Glacier. This was truly spectacular especially being the nerdy geographer i am! I spent the rest of the day looking for accommodation which i eventually found so all was well.