We're in Christchurch today, in the south island. It is a pretty big city (well, for New Zealand) and reminds me a bit of Auckland and Wellington.

From Queenstown (when I last wrote), we did the 'bottom bus'', which is an additional thing that not many people do. So we had a small bus of about 20 people. The driver was really nice, although he looked as though he was on something. Firstly we went from Queenstown to Duneden. This is the Scottish word for Edinburgh, and it was just a mini Edinburgh. It was a really studenty town, which was nice. The next day it was really really pouring down with rain at about 8.15am when we left. So I phoned Keri just before I ran outside. The sky was so grey and horrible, and it was kind of cold. From there we drove to Invercargill. Which I really really liked. The skies had cleared by about midday and we made a few mini stop offs for walks etc on the way. So we arrived there at about 8 and me and Becky decided to go next door to get something to it. It was SO nice in there! We had bangers and mash and then I had a cheese cake for dessert. In England it probably would have cost about 20pounds at least, but it came to only $20 which is about 7pounds! Ooh, and on the way to Invercargill we stopped at the worlds steepest street, and walked up it! massive!

From there we made our way to Curio Bay. On the way we stopped to sheer sheep and at a Paua shell shop and got a free necklace. Paua shells are shells that are found only off the south coast of NZ and are quite popular and famous. Curio Bay was really nice. The 'town' has a population of 12 locals, theres a few tourist, but not many. And at the beach there there are dolphins just swimming around. They're only tiny ones but if you go in the water they will swim up to you and play around you. There's about 30 of them at any one time. I didn't go in though because the land is the closest thing to Antartica so the sea was absolutely freezing, and although it was sunny there was a southerly breeze, coming from Antartica! becky also spotted a random penguin just sitting on the beach by itself, very cute! And also that day we saw seals and some sealions just lying on the beach, you could touch them if you wanted to, pretty stupid idea but you could if you were stupid.

Then we went to Te Anau. This was a really nice lake (theres lots over here) but a little lake side resort. Weren't there for long, just one night. We had some free drink vouchers so just went to the pub which some other Kiwi Bus people. Got to know them really well actually, one man works in a pregnancy test factory, lol. They're all really nice though. However, most of them are flying out from Christchurch so I'll most likely never see them again, sad.

The next day we wrang Katie in the morning and went to Milford Sounds. It was a loooong coach trip, 2hours there, 5hours back to Queenstown. It was good though. Except it was so cloudy so it ruined the scenery a bit. Some of the mountains we had to drive through were over 2500m tall!!!! They were huge and had snow on them, even in the middle of summer! And the road we went on is among the top 10 most dangerous roads in the world. Apparently in winter there are many averlanches and there is about 5-6metres of snow at the sides of the road. Quite exciting though.

yesterday when we checked in to Queenstown Hostel we were given room 114. So I went on up because I was dying for the toilet, and walked in. I have never seen such a horrible room in my life. I walked in to the 6 bed dorm and there were 4 boys in there. The room stank of smelly socks and there was laundry everywhere. Also someone had smashed a couple of bottles on the floor because there was broken glass everywhere, it looked like the window had been smashed in, and there were no clean beds. So I ran off to the toiledt and told becky to go in. She walked in and immediately walked out and went to get us another room, which ironically was the exact same one we slept in 4 nights before. And there must be at least 200 rooms in that hostel. So anyway we went with our new friend (who we're about to lose) Gemma and got some thing to eat because it was late, and went to bed.

Today we've driven all the way from Queenstown to Christchurch, 426km!!!! And she was driving slow, but some of the scenery was beautiful. Passed Mount Cook, the highest mountain in Nz, and it had snow up to half way down in the middle of summer! It was MASSIVE. And passed some pretty lakes, like this one in the picture and yes it is the same colour.

And here we are in Christchurch