Ok, so after we landed in Picton on the South Island, we got to speaking to our bus driver who had flown with us. He was called Nemo (all drivers had nicknames). He was pretty cool and we spent the next 2 weeks with him as our driver.  Everybody liked Nemo because he was our age and wanted to get drunk and party as often as possible.

Our first stayover was in Abel Tasman, famous for its boat tours. I took the next two days to recouperate from all the punishment I'd given my liver. Chris took the opportunity to allow Boxi to shave his head with his beard trimmers.....It took forever. We also met our Japanese friends Fumiko and Ayano who were a great laugh. We met heaps of funny people like Dave and Margs, who were a 40ish couple on the 3rd month of their honeymoon...they were the only two we met that could keep up with our drinking..they were utterly mad.  Then there was Briony, a wee slip of a lass who did her best to keep in touch drinking wise and was always up for a laugh.

From Abel Tasman we went to Barrytown where we had a fancy dress competition in the pub (winner got free Bungy jump). We had to dress like geeks...it was a proper laugh and everybody got wasted big time.  Barry was the worst though. He was hammered by 8pm. He ended up passing out at the bar and then I found him later on, sitting in the staff area on their toilet, with the door wide open and toilet paper in his hand. The landlady was not pleased. The next day the 3 of us and Boxi had arranged to go canoeing up the river. So 3 hungover Scots and one T-Total German went paddling. All our Canoes capsized at some point or another.....It was a great laugh and cleared our heads for the journey that day to Franz Josef which is famous for it's glacier. This glacier was incredible. Me and Barry decided to splash out on getting a helicopter ride up to the middle of it where we met our guide who took us on a 2 hour hike around the best part of the glacier. It was incredible. I started to lark around of course when the guide wasn't looking,smashing up ice walls and jumping across dangerous ravines. Chris on the other hand had an 8 hour round trip hike to contend with, and he only got to the bottom end of the glacier where it's all dirty. I was so glad I forked out the extra to get a helicopter ride to the best part. That night we went out again and all got wasted. This was the night I captured one of my favourite photos called 'THE LEER'. Its on the photo album.

The next stop was Queenstown.  We loved this town so much we stayed for 2 weeks.  It was so much fun.  Me and Boxi decided that we should do a bungy jump.  We were watching Dave and Briony doing a jump from a 43 metre bridge.  We were both scared but we thought...lets do it anyway.  Then I suggested that if we were gonna do it we should jump from the biggest one.  Boxi was well up for it too.  So 2 days later, on Boxing day, we went to the Nevis Highwire.  This is a pod which hangs on cables above a valley.  The drop on the bungy is 134 metres...8 seconds of falling...it was so scary.  I 'm so glad Boxi was there to back me up.....Chris and Baz chickened out coming along. Anyways...I had to go before Boxi because I was heavier than him.  It was such a rush....it felt like jumping to my death and the fall went on for ages.  When it was Boxi's turn it was dead funny because something on the winching pole broke and the 3 staff memebers were trying to fix it as Boxi was sitting there waiting to jump......he was terrified!!  I'm so glad i bought the DVD with this.  Chris says he even gets nervous just watching me jump on the video.....ha ha.

We also met Jo and Sarah from Dundee.  Chris knew them because he went out with thier friend back home.  They worked in a cool Pub called Winneys which we were in most nights.  They managed to get us cheap drinks as well....which was handy.   Queenstown was just a 2 week party for us.  We had to say cheerio to Boxi before New Year though.  The past 4 weeks with him had been brilliant and it was really sad to see him go....one person I think we'd all like to see again...maybe in Germany.  He was a great guy.  Anyways, after New Year we took a wee trip to Milford Sound and Dunedin.  We tried to hire a rental car but, needless to say we didn't book in advance and just rocked up looking to be provided with a car on demand.  Luckily we got what I think was the last car in town and we motored off feeling great.  We had to drive through a mountain to get to the Sound, which was absolutely amazing....such a beautiful area.  It's like a Norwegian Fjord.  I'll let the photos do the talking.  The only downside was that Chris allowed himself to be talked into going to the underwater observatory, by a chick who wasn't even that hot....so me and Barry thought we'd best tag along.  This was the biggest waste of money ever.  Look at the picture I took of those two on the photo site...it sums it up perfectly.

That night we stayed in Te Anau and the next day we headed off to Dunedin....supposedly the twin city of Edinburgh....but we saw absolutley no resemblence.  Apparantly there was loads of Scottish decendants here......which I thought was a bad thing, because we couldn't wow the locals with our accents.  Anyways....it was pretty boring.  We went to a cool museum though and walked up the steepest street in the world....which was good to say I've done, I suppose.  On the way home though, my eagle eyes noticed a farmers fence leading to a house.  I turned the car around and took a picture of it...it was covered in pairs of shoes....far out!  It was well cool.  People have since told me there is another fence somewhere on the road which is covered in Bras.

When we got back to Queenstown we met up with Jo and Sarah again and went out for Barry's birthday, all of us ending up wasted of course.  Queenstown is not only the adrenalin capitol of the world, its also one of the most beutiful towns I've ever seen...check out the photos.  There is the Remarkable's mountain range on one side and a lake on the other side.  You can take a gondola to the top of Bob's Peak which overlooks the town and from there you can oversee the whole area.  Needless to say Barry was terrified, again, going up in the Gondola, so I took a picture to remind him.  While we were in Queenstown we had to say goodbye to a lot of friends we'd made on the Stray bus....Nemo, Nora, Jana, Briony, Dave and Margs, Whitney, Nikki, Jo, Sarah, Fumiko, Ayano, Babs and last but in no ways least our mate Peter Boxhammer (what a great surname).

So 17 days after we first arrived in Queenstown we decided to move on to Wellington  where we would spend a couple of nights before jetting off to Melbourne, Australia.  Mind you, it wasn't without incident.  As per usual the 3 of us got really drunk the night before in Queenstown drinking till about 3am and we didn't wake up till 7.50.  Now considering the bus was leaving at 8am sharp, it didn't leave 3 very drunk guys much time to pack our bags and get out.  Baz managed it, and I think Chris might have too.  But I couldn't find some belongings and didn't want to risk leaving them behind, so i reopened my bags.  Baz was running up the stairs telling me to hurry up  because the driver was angry at us.  I told him and Chris just to go because I was leaving them for a night anyway to go  rafting in Rangitata.  But they stayed behind and the bus left.  Baz was going mental at me because he missed the bus...Chris didn't care...we were just laughing because we were drunk and liked Queenstown anyway.  We had to book back in for another night..yet again.  The staff were by now well used to us saying "think we'll stay a bit longer"...it was funny.  We all went back to bed, but Baz wasn't speaking to me.  Me and Chris later went for Ice creams on the beach and laughed about our situation.  Then we met Jo and Sarah who couldn't believe we were still there.  We'd said cheerio to them every night for the past 5 nights, each time believing we were gonna be heading off...and each time our plans changed...oh well...bothing like being reliable eh?

I reckon the past 5 weeks in New Zeland would have to rank as some of the best weeks of my life to date.  We all had so much fun and met so many great people...unreal.