Hello again everyone! It's our last day in NEW ZEALAND today, we fly out from Christchurch and into Sydney tomorrow. So will give everyone whose interested a quick update on what we've been up to in NZ. We've been here for a month now and its been brilliant. We landed in Auckland 4weeks ago and stayed with a friend of Deborahs mums and dads - Dorothy. She was really nice and really looked after us for the 3days we spent with her - she also had two nice dogs. While we were with her we saw Auckland and a bit of the surrounding area. Aucklands not the capital of NZ but is by far the largest city 3million out a total of 4million NZers live there. its alright nothing special really but a nice enough place. Anyway after 3 days at Dorothys we picked up our Campervan - it was only small and cheap and bright orange but has worked out really well - we used it to travel for the next 3 and a bit weeks and just dropped it off earlier today. So travelling around in our campervan we got to see pretty much all of New Zealand. Its a brilliant place it must be one of the most beautiful countries in the world the scenery is really spectacular - we've taken loadsa photos but its difficult not too, everywhere you go is a photo opportunity. The landscapes are so varied aswell - NZs only the size of the UK but the amout of different scenery in such a small place is incredible - theres sandy beaches like in hawaii and fiji, hills out a volvic advert, loads of mountains that are just like the alps, flat fields of sheep and vineyards, thermal areas with mudpools and geysers, glaciers, fjords and husge forests like your in the rocky mountains, and rivers everywhere too. Theres too much to talk about in detail really so i'll justtell you some of the good bits - Rotorua - this is a volcanic area, we went to the Wai-o-tapu thermal wonderland! it was great - was kinda like being on a different planet - loadsa craters and brightly coloured lakes and geysers like the one in this picture. it was cool as theres not many places in the world you can see stuff like that. Waitomo - Theres loads of caves here - i wanted to do some blackwater rafting but we opted for a guided walk instead - it was brilliant though saw thousands of gloworms and stalachtights (?) and mites ? that was really good. Milford Sound - we went on a cruise along Milford Sound and saw huge waterfalls a rainforest and a pod of bottlenose dolphins - one of them jumped up right infront of us (the captain said he'd never seen one do that before in the 6 yrs he'd worked there) so i was well lucky to get a photo of it in mid air was pretty spectacular The Glaciers - we walked up to the face of both Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers - they were huge and the were massive chunks of ice falling off as we were watching - you dont see stuff like that very often either so it was cool, there was a brilliant rainbow over the fraz josef glacier too so got some great photos. We bumped into Scott too! he was about to go and do a skydive and looked pretty scared, was so weird bumping into him in literally the midlle of nowhere. Kerosene Creek - this was a little river where you can go and swim for free in the thermal waters - it was boiling! we went for a swim it was weird it was just in the middle of a wood and all overgrown and made us orange and stink but it was fun! Kaikoura - this is the whale watching capital of the world - its a well nice area - we went on a whale watching cruise and saw two sperm whales, about 500 dusky dolphins and a couple of species of huge albatross - was brilliant - got a great photo of a whales tail too. Later that day we went on a walk to see a waterfall where there were about 50 seals playing in the tiny pool and the woods around - it was just unbelievable - they wernt meant to be there as its fresh water but we'd heard about them from a campsite owner and so we went to check it out - it was so surreal they were evrywher and you could literally reach out and touch them (we didnt coz they woulda bitten our hands off!) but just brilliant we were the only ones there and just stood and watched them for 3/4 an hr before they started yelping and chased us off! it was probably the highlight of our time here really. Hanmer Springs - sat in the thermal pools of this alpine resort for a whole morning till we were well wrinkled - was a lovely place. Skydive over Abel Tasman - Have already written bout this so wont bore you again but was definately a highlight - wouldnt mind doing it again now. We'll show you the dvds when were back theyre funny. Deborah fell in a pan - i pushed deborah over in our campervan and she got her head stuck in a saucepan - she said 'pawl im stuck in a pan!' was well funny Paul got toothpaste in his hair (written by DV) - paul was about to brush his teeth and had a blob of toothpaste on his toothbrush,i knocked his hand and the blob of toothpaste flew through the air and landed right in the front of his hair-we didnt stop laughing for about 10 minutes! Right, guess thats about all really - everydays been great here to be honest - we're excited about Sydney now though, will put on another update in a week or so when we leave there. Hope your all well - lots of love - paul and deborah xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxsexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx