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Hello from the South Island. We are now the proud owners of an absolutely brilliant little campervan and we'd now like to be known as Max and Paddy. After an unbelievably slow but scenic ferry crossing from the north island we picked up our van and headed to Nelson which is a pretty little town on the coast, nothing very exciting happened there except for Phil being driven into by a FEMALE learner driver whilst walking on the PAVEMENT to the Post Office, fortunately no great injury was suffered and the girl that hit me broke down in tears, ha! The following day we headed down the East Coast to Kaikoura, which is the most beautiful place we've ever seen. There were snow capped mountains dropping right down into the crystal clear sea, amazing! One of the big attractions here was the whale watching trips, so we got ourselves booked onto that. Unfortunately we chose the windiest day that NZ has experienced in decades and as a result the trip was cancelled. We were very upset but I think we're over it now. Anyway we did go seal kayaking, which meant us sharing a canoe and paddling about in the sea where we promised that all manner of marine life would come and play around the canoes. We saw precisely 3 seals (from a distance) and not one other animal. Money well spent! Anyway it was fun and the scenery was ace. The following day was a total write off, we drove down to Christchurch to meet friends, couldn't find them so we decided to head over to the West Coast, we got halfway across the country before being turned back as the road had flooded, arrrggghh! We spent the night at a place called Hanmer Springs which is a ski resort just north of Christchurch. Today we finally made it to Greymouth on the West Coast. We've had a pretty amazing afternoon. Almost as soon as we arrived we booked ourselves on a caving trip and off we went. It was a full wetsuits and helmet job and at times it was a little scary. We were about 70 metres underground in the pitch black (except for headtorches) and we were wading through waist deep water, sliding down waterfalls and the highlight was floating through the caves on rubber tubes with the luminous glowworms on the ceiling lighting up the cave, absolutely stunning! Phil discovered that he suffers a mild form of claustrophobia about halfway through a very narrow, low, dark tunnel. But he surfaced on the other side and battled on!!!! Once back in daylight (what a relief) we slid down a 30 metre waterfall which the guide stressed was at our own risk, it was great, very fast and not particularly safe but fun all the same. Tomorrow we're heading up to Pancake Rocks then we're heading down south to the Glaciers and our skydive!! Byebye x
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