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Hey All!
Merry Christmas! Hope you've all had a fantastic few days!
So heres the updates... We ended up staying in Capital Wellington for about 4 days.. took advantage of the free things such as the musuems, botanic gardens etc etc.. oh and visited the Te Papa Museum- the largest cultural attraction in the country.
Something we weren't aware of was that Wellington City is located directly on a major earthquake fault line, meaning there is loads of seismic activity in the area and they actually have earthquakes daily and hundreds weekly.. half of which you appartently don't even feel! We didn't until one night we were getting in bed and felt one after the other! It's strange but actually just felt like Will was shaking the bunk beds!!
Our first night in Wellington was out celebrating with all of the people of our bus.. you see those people who only half a few weeks in New Zealand will only stay in each place one night.. so most of the people we'd been with for about a week were heading south the next day! Sad times! As they are a bunch of lovely people and weren't going to be with me on my actual birthday they got me a birthday cake and card from everyone which was lovely and the birthday celebrations began!
Oh and Will got his Maori Tattoo is Wellington! Its lovely!... take a look at a picture... it's the silver fern.. the only native fern to grow here in New Zealand... alot of their professional sports times have the same kind of logo.. including the All Blacks.
The next day.. 15th December... My 22nd Birthday wooop! We started the day with a REALLY early trip from Wellington ferry terminal which takes us over to Picton and Nelson. For all those that don't know.. New Zealand is made up of two islands, the north and the south. Up until now we had only travelled around the North Island.. and today we started our trip right at the top west corner of the South Island! It looks like a tony piece of water on the map but it actually took us nearly 4 hours to cross the sea!
We passed through the beautiful Queen Charlotte Sound and Malborough Sounds.. with secluded beaches, beautiful native forests and gorgeous weather.. this is where the famous and rich go for their summer holidays!!
Back on the bus again we headed to Nelson.. New Zealand's sunniest city and home to The Abel Tasman National Park... only one of New Zealands 14!.. We stayed in Nelson for 4 days... it was a beautiful city and we all agreed we would love to go back there if we get time. We spent our time enjoying the sun shine, shopping and visiting the National Park.
We decided to travel up to Abel Tasman N.P, got a water taxi around the coast line to see the amazing scenery and planned a 6 hour trekk back to our campsite for the evening... well to cut a long story short due to high tides in the middle of the day.. this 6 hour trekk turned into a 9 hour day and we didn't get back to camp til 7pm.. enough time to get up the tents, grap some dinner and a few beers and head to bed! Although we were all absolutely exhausted we had an amazing time and the trekk took us through really remote and unspoilt coastlines of New Zealand.. you'll see from the pictures! Whilst in Nelson we headed up to the 'Centre of New Zealand', basically if you were to cute New Zealand into four and climb up a stupidly steep hill you are offiically in the middle of the country! Good views!
Our next stop was at VERY tiny town named Westport.. orginally known for gold and later coal mines.. however this was short lived and the town hasn't really grown into anything else! Not much else to say about Westport.. it was sooooo quiet, horrible rainy weather and nothing was open! Needless to say we got up early and left for our next stop at Lake Mahinapua...
In Lake Mahinapua we stayed at a place known as the 'Poo Pub' which is run by a local 86 year old man, who only caters from travellers from the Kiwi Experience Bus. He gets a new group of people come through everyday and each day is a new fancy dress theme. Our theme was 'P' and you can see by the pictures some were very inventive!!
The next morning we headed off early to Frabz Josef.. nestled in Westland National Park, the glacier region of South Westland has amazing snow capped peaks, vast forests, sand dunes, lagoons and beaches nestled along varied coastline. This area holds World Heritage Status and is amongst the most beautiful places in the world. Westland Tai Poutini National Park is a striking feacture of the glacial region, encompassing the two most famous glaciers... Franz Joef and Fox Glacier.
We opted onto one of the four glacier trips.. a 6 hour hike up Frans Josef!- Rated by travellers at the best thing to do in New Zealand how could we not!! These glaciers dominate the park, descending from perpetual snow at 2500 metres above sea level. There is only one other place in the world, Patagonia, where glaciers decend into rainforest.
Franz Josef is the most famous of the two.. it is a 12 km long glacier and is unique as it descends from the Southern Alps to less than 300 m above sea level and the rainforest. It is fed by a 20 square metre bowl of snow high in the Southern Alps. The glacier advances and retreats due to ever changing climate and melt water at the foot of the glacier.. at times the glacier can grow more than 70cm's per day! The Glacier hike was amazing.. taking you up to superb scenery at the heart of the glacier.. involving step cutting, ice falls, and ice holes! Take a long at the pics! Oh and we thought as it's nearly Christmas and this was the only snow we were going to see- santa hats were a must!! :)
After a few days in Franz Josef we headed South to Wanaka, after stopping to view mirror lakes of Mt Cook on Lake Matheson and the Fox Glacier. Wanaka is known for it's skiing resorts. After spending the night we heading South still and entered Queenstown on Christmas Eve- Adventure Capital of the World and backpacker central!
Queenstown has been made famous due a number of different adrenalin crazy sports! Queenstown is home to Bungy Jumping! Where some crazy guys decided it was a good idea to jump of a really high ledge over water, the city, a gorge.. anything basically!! There are so many options to choose from! And on Christmas Eve, Will throw himself off the Kawarau River Bridge.. the first ever commerically operated Bungy site in the world! 47 metres over a fast flowing river! I was sooo scared just watching him! His pics and DVD is great! A few others did it with him and that night... the same as the Sky Diving.. all those that throw themselves off a cliff celebrated the fact they all survied another day!
We celebrated Christmas Eve Queenstown's best nightlife in the country! I'll let you just look the pictures to decide what kind of time it was! Oh and all the drinks were served in Tea-Pots! Random!
Christmas Day! Woop! We spent the morning hungover before heading to 'World Bar' for our massive Christmas Dinner, presents from Santa and more drinking from Tea Pots! We spent the afternoon/ evening down by the beach, with BBQ food and much much drink and hundreds of travellers from all over the world all celebrating together! A group of guys managed to link their sound system with amps and a laptop up to a motel so we had dance and Christmas Music all day long! It was very weird to not be with you all on Christmas Day and I missed you very much but it certainly was amazing spenting Christmas in the sun eating ice cream for lunch and sitting in a dress sunbathing! No one jealous much no?! Hehe!
Anyways spent the last few days recovering from Christmas celebrations, enjoying Queenstown's crazy sports and loving the sun! We are planning to stay here until the 2nd January when we will head North to carry on with our trip! We would have been here 9 days! It's by far the longest we've been in any place, but loving the fact I can unpack abit and leave things around! Feels like home over the festive period :)
Missing you all tonnes and Hope you all have a fantastic New Year!! Will catch up soon :)
Love to you all x x x x
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