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Friday night we went out for dinner at a thai restaurant and then went to a bar called minus 5-which is literally minus 5 (or 7 when we were there!) degrees, but we were given a coat and gloves and a cocktail included in the package. Everything is made from ice-the walls, the seats, the bar and even the glasses we had our drinks in! They had lots of ice sculptures of rudby players and maori masks- It was definitely the prettiset bar we've been in and was very cool (ha ha), but after half an hour I was pretty glad to get out as i made the mistake of holding my glass instead of putting it on the table and had therefore lost all feeling in both of my hands.
On Saturday night we booked ourselves on the 'Kiwi Crawl' which turned out to be a complete sham, as instead of the 6 drinks that we thought we'd paid for they tried to give us shots which just smelled like they just might kill us, and everyone else seemed pretty drunk after the first bar so we ended up going home early and having a hot chocolate instead!
From Queenstown we went to Te Anaua where we stayed last night so that we could travel to Milford Sound Today. Apparently there's only one hostel in Milford and as we hadn't booked ahead we didn't fancy risking the drive if we'd have to come straight back again because they were full. It was horrible for the whole day yesterday so we didn't really explore much of the town. Milford sound was nice-very very quiet and i guess it's only there for the tourists as there don't seem to be any houses, shops or much else. We went on a 1 and a 1/2 hour cruise of the sound (which apparently is a Fiord), which was pleasant, and it was nice to see the waterfalls and mountains up close, but it was so cold and windy, and I think we may have seen more picturesque scenery just from driving from place to place. When we came off of the boat it was raining (again), then sunny for a bit, and when we came out the other end of the long tunnel it was snowing! Very random! We also saw some Kea, which are like parrots, stood on the road, but we didn't stop for a closer look as we've heard that they can rip windscreen wipers and side view mirrors off quite easily.
We're now in Invercargill, just to break up the journey to Christchurch if anything, but it seems like another lively place, though a lot less touristy than Queenstown. It's been pretty horrible today and it's suddenly turned freezing! We've found an awesome hostel which has a bar and makes milkshakes (Sam has developed a very unhealthy addiction to milkshakes and marshmallows-I'm getting quite worried), and we've managed to get discount with our YHA cards. And I've also got another new camera (exactly the same one I had before) as I managed to damage the screen during the rainy spell in Franz Josef, and it was cheaper to buy a new one than pay the excess to claim on the insurance (which seems like a bit of a con...). From here I think w're heading to Dunedin for a night and then on to Christchurch.
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