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The day of the England vs Georgia rugby world cup match in Dunedin was awesome, there was such a great atmosphere. We hung out in town for a bit in the morning watching the street performers then headed out in earnest after eating lunch and painting England flags on our cheeks. The pubs were filled with Brits and Kiwis pretending to be Georgian fans, just to p*** the Brits off. It was working; Jak was sufficiently enraged to turn round to a few people wearing Georgian flags and ask 'so whereabouts in Georgia are you from?' and, when they revealed that they weren't from there at all, 'do you even know where Georgia is?' It was scary how many of them didn't! It was all good fun though. The match itself was cool; we won but the Georgians played well so it was interesting to watch. We had good seats as well, it felt like we were really close to the players -although the delectable Johnny Wilkinson wasn't playing :-(
After the game we went on for drinks with people we'd met earlier and stumbled home in the wee hours. It felt really good to celebrate being English and meet lots of other English people when you're the other side of the world; I lost count of the amount of times we sang 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot', and at one point late in the night the whole pub spontaneously burst into 'God Save the Queen', as you do.
The next day we jumped back on the Magic Bus and were driven to Lake Tekapo. On the way out of Dunedin our driver forced us to climb Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world (puff pant), and stopped off at the Moeraki Boulders, huge spherical rocks scattered across the beach. We were shattered after the previous night's celebrations and it was snowing(!) in Lake Tekapo so we decided to call it an early night.
Yesterday morning we went snow tubing. It was great fun; you get given a rubber ring to sit in and are pushed down a steep slope of icy snow whilst trying not to fall out or let your rear touch the bottom of the ring as otherwise it will hurt like hell when you go over the bumps, which you see coming but have no possible way of avoiding. Jak thought it was hilarious to shove me without warning or spin me, hard, so that my legs would flail wildly and everything was a blur and I couldn't see where I was going. Sadist. The snow tubing place also had outdoor hot pools, so once we couldn't feel our toes anymore we jumped into those to warm up and relax :-)
The afternoon was gloriously sunny and clear so, after feeding bread to the ducks at the lake-edge, we set off up Mount John to get a good view of the lake. We'd been told it was only a twenty minute walk to the summit but we must be seriously unfit because it took us about an hour and we had to stop and rest every 10 minutes. At one point we considered turning back but the thing that kept us going was the thought of a nice cold coke in the cafe at the top, and of course the fabulous views. When we finally reached the top the cafe turned out to be one of those overpriced poncy places that only sells organic products ('whaaat no coke???') but the views were wicked: we could see Lake Tekapo from shore to shore, and snow-tipped mountains in the distance, and miles and miles of pure nothingness. It was so quiet we could hear the birds eating! Apparently the best stargazing in New Zealand can be done from the very spot we were standing on, if you have a spare $80 or so to use all the equipment, because the view is so good. Jak got fidgety after half an hour so we clambered back down, smiling smugly at all the poor sweaty people on their way up and reassuring them with patronising calls of 'not long now!' when really we knew they had bloody miles to go.
Today was our last day on the Magic Bus. We have been dropped off in Christchurch and will spend a couple of nights here before moving onto Kaikoura for our last few nights in New Zealand.
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