Blogsitter says:

Sorry for the delay. Blogger decided that all old accounts needed upgrading to the new one, but as this blog is owned by Charbs and she's not here it became rather complicated. Anyway, here's what she's sent me since.

Charbs says:

Hiya!!!!

Cant remember if I emailed you all from Waitomo so I'll giveyou a quick update on all our adventures since leaving Auckland!

waitomo is a tiny little one street town, famous for nothing but its caves and glowworms, we got to sit in rubber rngs and leap off of waterfalls and into freezing cold water to float along looking at all the glow worm lights, they are amazingly pretty.

On the next day we were there, we went under ground again, this time abseiling our waydown, I really loved this and had a great time, and it was proper caving as well after that, we were crawling on our hands and knees under tiny rock holes and scrambling up huge gushing waterfalls and getting shouted at (heheh) for still not knowing left from right!

The group we did this with were all french people, but mad as anything and great fun, they led us in a conga line, waist deep in freezing cold water while our Kiwi caving guides, just looked on bemused!

After that they decided we needed to go celebrate our underground adventures and took me, Emma and Dan our guide to the pub, where we drank lots and ended up going back to their place at 11.30 so they could cook us roast beef!

After Waitomo, we caught the coach to Wanganui, (Wendy Waldegrave if you remember her bob! ) which is where an old friend of mine now lives, I've not seen her for 7 years but she's still the same as ever, and even still has our pictures up on the wall. The last time we saw her daughter she was 6 and now is 14 and really tall.

Shes still mad about horses, that we introduced her too!! and she took us all out to see her comepete in a 1 day event, and we ended up being brought into judge a fence, on the cross country course to make sure no one refused it or fell off and Becky came 4th in that event so a good day all round!

We then headed into Wendys school where she teaches to listen to a Maori initiation ceromony for all the year 7s and new starters, which was really interesting!

On sunday she took us to a place called Taihapi, where we did a 100km flying fox with Becks, which is like a zip wire over all the trees and cliff tops, while strapped into a hammock, we floew along like asuperman!

We also did a 80ft (or metre - whatever's tallest) bungee jump, I got scared at the top again and made the people turn me about so I can jump off backwards, dunno why I find that less scary!Bungying is the craziest thign ever, unlike the sky tower jump we only had the one rope about our ankles and we free-fell for what seemed ages before being bounced back up again.

The worst part is hanging about(!) waiting to be rescued, cos the adrenaline takes over and your legs start to shake and you feell like you might slip out of the ankle harness!!

Sunday We got to Wellington, which I have to say I dont like as much as Auckland, I'm not even sure why but its not as fun, anyway we were only there for 2 nights so we throughly explored the city, discovered the local spirit of choice midori (melon liquor) which is dead nice with cranberry! and went on a movie tour, where we got to sit in Lord of the ring and King Kong sets, which was very neat!

today so far we've taken the ferry across to the South Island where we're currently in a place caleld Nelson and tomorrow move on to a place called Kaikoura, and then to Dundedin, both of these places are supposed to be the best places in New Zealand to spot wildlife, so we're going whale watching, albatross spotting and sea kayaking to see fur seals and find a rare penguin colony, so really looking forward to that!

Kaikoura was an absolutely amazing place, we got to go and view sperm whales diving and chilling out on the surface and went sea kayaking with a guy, who looked a little like a seal himself and did very good seal impressions!! It was great and we got to get a lot closer than yu would from the shore or from a boat and even got to see a tiny blue or fairy penguin cruising in the water.We also went Albatross spotting in really rough seas, you dont actually appreciate how big thoser birds are until you see them in comparision with another gull!

We even made friends with a tiny piglet next door (Piggles!)

Next stop after that was Christchurch, its a very old fashioned english town and we staye here for one night taking it sedately after our last few weeks of non stop activities, and rode the tram and cable cars.We're now spending our final night in Dunedin (based loosely on Edinburgh, but with steeper hills and nicer weather!!) Again we've been taking it sedately, been on a wildlife cruise today, and saw super rare yellow eyed penguins and toured a brewery and cadbury world, both places with free samples!!!

Tomorrow we move on again to Queenstown, where we're spending the day white water rafting so cant wait for that one!!


Blogsitter says:

I'd imagine it was more a 100m flying fox thing. 100km would've taken them about 5 hours :)

And she's right, Kaikoura is amazing and so is Queenstown for that matter!