News, news and more news....

Well, it's been a while since I blogged....two weeks ago infact! Where to start?

First of all: A BIG THANK YOU to all your birthday wishes - be it via texts, phone calls or emails, I felt truely loved! Love you guys!xxx

We left Mt Cook village and stayed with the Jolly's (our WWOOFing hosts) until the following Wednesday. When we arrived at the farm, we met friends of theirs, Geoff and Carol, and while talking about going to Christchurch (where they came from), they invited us to their house! Their son was playing the double base in his band and they were going to be performing at an Irish pub. Hannah and I were really excited at the prospect to listen to live irish music....

Before leaving the Jolly's we went for an afternoon walking in a forest not too far from the farm where there were 1500 yr old Toatara trees....if anything, it was their roots that had me all excited! They extended for at least 25m all around their base along the forest ground! It was amazing! On Wednesday we drove to Christchurch, stopping at the "cookie time" factory to have a bit of a nose....and sure enough, didn't leave empty handed! Lol! 1kg of broken double chocolate cookies! YUM! Before we went to Geoff and Carol's house we visited the Antartic Centre. Again, learnt a lot about the Antartic: it's the coldest, windiest, driest and highest continent in the world....but I had a lot of fun to go into a simulator, that simulated a storm and -25 degrees celcius......Brrrrrr! Apparently, Christchurch is the centre for more than 75% of all flights to the Antartic.....

After an excellent sleep in private rooms at Geoff and Carol's, we went to the Banks Peninsula for a day trip and basically enjoyed breath taking views and A LOT of wind on the Summit Road. We did a couple of walks including one 30min hike to the summit of a mountain.... The Banks Peninsula is formed from two volcanoes that blew their tops thousands of years ago, and the craters are now two harbours.....we watched the sunset at one of these harbours.

Friday we spent the day helping Geoff clear away a huge rose and ivy plant all twisted together and boy did I get a couple of war wounds from that! Roses are vicious! We burnt all the dry branches, baking potatoes in the embers that went with the Roast Lamb that evening. What a treat! Two of their three sons - Ben and Tim - came over before Tim went to the pub to start playing. We arrived at the pub at 10pm and stayed till 1am dancing the night away, while they carried on performing till 3 or 4 o'clock!

Saturday we spent exploring Christchurch, following a long drive to Kaikoura.... The next morning we decided to do the "cliff-top walk" and walk to the seal colonies. It was very windy but generally dry. When we got to the first seal colony, there were several sleeping on rocks just metres away from the carpark. We started our walk along the shore line, several times almost being blown over! After a little while we decided to head back, becuase it didn't seem like a good idea to do a clifftop walk when there are gale force winds about! We could see the headlines: "tourists die while doing a clifftop walk during gale force winds"..... several tourists die here every year becuase they don't take safety seriously....since i've been here, two people have died on the Tongariro crossing (they were wearing jeans which got wet, got lost, and spent the night in the mountains in wet jeans and froze to death), a young englishman fell off a waterfall...etc....So yea, Hannah and I headed back. It was a good thing too, because the wind picked up even more and now we were being sandblasted by small stones from the overhanging cliffs..... but we made it back safely and walked back to the hostel slowly....it was hard work walking against the wind!

That evening we were on the ferry once agian to the North Island. We arrived early monday morning and so slept in our car in a multistory carpark! I picked up my flight tickets to South America early Monday morning and then we headed north. We didn't do a lot of exciting things till Wednesday morning.....at 11:20 Hannah and I jumped out of a plane above lake Taupo from 12000 feet! Absolutely amazing!

The day after the skydive was my birthday. It was a bit of an anti climax after such a adrenaline rush of the day before, but Hannah and I still enjoyed ourselves. We visited a geothermal area, enjoying the sulphur fumes, the vibrant colours in the lakes and vapours in the air. We also watched a mudpool for a while, enjoying the "blup, blup, blup" noises coming from it! lol! For my birthday we stayed at a B&B and went out for a meal: Indian! Boy was that nice or what? I ordered my favourite: tandori chicken.....but I didn't just get a leg, but a WHOLE chicken! So i was going to have it this weekend, but as it turns out, Hannah and I left it in the fridge of our hostel we stayed in last night:-(

Today I'm in Hamilton, after driving Hannah to the airport this morning. Yep, that's right, I'm on my own once again! I've got two weeks left and then I'm off to Hawaii! I can hardly believe the time has almost come to leave this fantastic country! It's horrible weather, so i decided to do some research on PhD's.....

Happy Birthday Meike and Dad on the 2nd May!