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Kia Ora everyone, yep fluent in Maori now that we're in our final week of New Zealand.
Well theres one great way of summing up our shananigans since the last time we wrote. 3, 2, 1 BUNGY!!!! After a brief stop in Wanaka which involved a 5 hour hike up a mountain (no we were nt forced to do it we decided to do it ourselves, although maybe regretted it a bit after 3-4 hours) , we travelled down to Queenstown, the adventure sport capital of NZ and prob the world. After crapping ourselves on our way dowbn there about the thought of actually jumping off an edge with just an elastic band attached to our legs, we passed the Kawarau bridge bungy site and decided to pull in and JUST WATCH the people throw themselves off the cliff! It looked amazing so after watching a couple we thought screw it, lets do it. It had to be done as it was the first ever commercial bungy and you could get dunked in the water as well. So off we went paid for our plumit and soon enough we were standing on the edge of the 43m bridge. Bryn went first and silently fell to the icy water underneath, it looked amazing and you could see the adranaline obviously pumping through him as he got untied and sprinted up the stairs back to the viewing platform...ive never seen the boy move so fast :-). My turn next and soon i was up to my thighs in water after diving off the bridge...amazing!!!! We were buzzing afterwards and hadnt even got to Queenstown yet.
Obviously after doing the Kawarau bridge jump, we had to do the big one, the Nevis highwire so we booked to do the 134m drop the next day along with some white water rafting too....we were feeling like right adranaline junkies!! It was an early start to get up to the Necvis high wire and 40 min later we were in the middle of no where suspended between two mountains in a cable car 134m above the valley!! This one felt alot more extreme. The drop was huge and we could nt believe we were going to throw ourselves of it. 3, 2, 1 BUNGYYYYY. This time you really felt it, as you had an 8.5 second fall to the bottom which was exhilirating!!! The view down there was awesome as we got winched back up to the top of the cable car. We got DVDs of both jumps each so we;ll have to show you them when we get back just as proof that we did actually do it.
The afternoon was spent white water rafting. The bus ride up there though was the scariest thing i ve ever done! It was along an old gold mining track along the cliff face. We were lioterally inches away from the crumbiling edges which was very scary. One of the corners that the bus driver had to navigate was called rock scrath corner. The driver had to get the front right wheel to hang off the edge of the cliff slightly while the left hand side of the bus scraped the cliff edge...at this stage we thought we were about to do another bungy, without the rope and in a bloody bus!! After finally getting there we set off down the shotover river to do some grade 4 white water rafting. After the intial tame bit where we learnt the basiics, it was into the thick of it down some crazy rapids withme and Brynat the front getting absalutely soaked. The grand finally of the 2 hour raft was through one of only 2 tunnels in the world that you can whitewaterraft through. It was pretty amazing and the rapid at the end of it was insane!! A hot shower (which at the mo is a novelty as we're in our camper) and a SAUNA (def a novelty) finished a perfect day of adranaline sports...surely the rest of the trip was going to be dull after this....lol
Following Queenstown, we decided to head to Glenorchy and Paradise (yest thats its real name) to go and stay and trek around some of the scenery where lord of the rings was filmed. It looked absalutely amazing and we had to get the token pictures of us with our shies on our knees looking like hobits!!
Dunedin wasthe next stop...Dunedin is a scottish settlement on the East coast of south Island, and it def lived up to its scottishness...it was cold and wet whioch was nt great....but Cadbury came to the rescue as they have a Cadbury world there so obviously it would be rude not to go in. After plenty of freebies and a tour of the factory with a very northern COCO JOE it was onwards with our bag full of goodies...oh cadburys is huge over here, they have so many more bard than we do.
Up the coast back towards Christchurch we stopped and saw seals and penguins which were pretty cool and got some great pics of them right up close. Back in Christchurch we had to say goodbye tol Golden tops are Wicked camper van and venture to a backpackers place again...urghhhhh! That night we had a proper meal at a restaurant in Christchurch. They specialised in hot plates so we got ourselves hotplates....Bryn had the biggest steak id ever seen and i had Kangaroo, Croc and Wild boar...all very tasty and it was a bonus cooking them on the hot plates ourselves...the night continued to an Irish bar where we randomly met a couple we had met on the white water rapids!
The following day we had to get up to the North Island for our final week. Found an amazing deal on a camper van which is costing us 40p a day for the first 5 andthey paid for our ferry crossing....we thought it was too good to be true, but we're in it and its amazing....it feels like something of MTV cribs, with a fridge and the piere de resistance, a DVD player!! wowe living in luxury now.
The ferry crossing wasa spectacular and afetr 4 hours we arrived in not so speactacular Wellington (although it was dark to be fair) Tghe following day it was up to the Whanganui river where we decided to do an 8 hour hike which to our delight only eneded up taking us 4...dont klnow whether we cheated or just did it really quickly but we were pretty chuffed!
As we re literally doing a whistle stop tour of the North, it was straight up to the Valconaoes the next day. Aggain these volcanoes were used in the Lord of the Rings and you can see why...the Volcanoe is perfectly vaolcanoe like...so being true hikers that we are we did a hike between the two volcanoes and to the foot of one of them...both being active volcanoes...one of them even 'erupted' in September without warning.
Well thats our update so far then...plenty of adranaline sports and hiking, which is what NZ is all about. We're at the Waitomo caves at the moment waiting to go on an underground blackwater rafing experience. The caves are filled with glow worms so really looking forward to that! Sure we'll update you on that soon though. Oh 1 week today and we'll be in FIJI...bring on the sun and heat and beaches
Much love, Ryan and Bryn
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