Tudor Court Motel Christchurch

... son is Ernest Rutherford who split the atom. There have areas dedicated to him, most predominantly his den where he carried out some of his studies. The grounds resemble those of UCC with a green in the centre quadrant. There are little wings off each building which hold numerous little stores selling more upmarket arty merchandise.

One of our brochures advised taking a few historical walks around the centre so we obeyed. Like the UK ...

... wrong. As we barely managed to stay awake during cooking dinner and the original plans of studying the map and sending emails afterwards were scrapped as we slowly passed out in our room as if being shot by sedated blow darts. It seemed that our body clocks did not agree with our assessment and needed to adjust making us the original party animals as we climbed into bed at 6.30 on a Friday night! Zzzzzzzzzz!

Tomorrow we need to find a ride and hit the road.

... In places you could see the vivid turquoise colour through deep cracks in the glacier. After the skiers unloaded we had the helicopter top ourselves with Jules and we flew over and around Franz Joseph then flew over Fox glacier, circling around to get some great photos of the glaciers and waterfall and follow a mountain goat picking its way through the snow, then back along the stream which trickled from the end of the glacier widening out onto the plains into a fully fledged ...

... hotel. I was carrying a rucksack with trekking shoes tied to it and I had a pair of dirty cargo pants on and was red faced with snot running down my lip. But still my face should have read "don't **** with me". "Andy" clearly wasn't very good at reading faces. Upon telling me he didn't have my reservation and surely only a breath away from calling security, he asked if I was there to work in the kitchen!!!!!

My tone became one of attack. All it took ...

... a few of the waterfalls for added thrills. On one such venture. he asked 2 passengers to don raincoats and hold glasses in wire cages out to catch the water as he nosed the boat into the falls.. Judging from the faces of the crew, I'd say it's a local joke, as the volunteers were absolutely saturated. They had good fun, though. All was well until we hit the sea swells. I'm not a seafarer & started to turn a nice fern green colour immediatele. Lucky for me, it was only a taste and ...

... the only one on the bus who understood why it was so funny.... So yeah, wake up in the mountains, go to Milford Sound, watch Wedding Crashers. Pretty nutty. Or as the Canadians would say: "Pretty Nutty, eh?" Back in Queenstown, the Party Capital of the Southern Hemisphere...or whatever...we met up with our Kiwi Experience friends for one last night out at the Base Hostel Bar "Altitude" (they all have such cool names ...

... up here. They have a concrete luge track you can ride down on a luge sled on wheels. I actually did this when I was younger at Winter Park, Colorado where they have a similar set-up. There was also a tandem parasailing opportunity that takes you back to the bottom where you land in a field. There is also a bungee jumping platform where you leap off into the valley and then bounce back up. I decided to pass on all these activities and just take the gondola ...

... tout le monde se cache dans sa capuche et moi je suis la et j'attends... j'attends. Bon ok c'est assez l'homme du nord, sort de la, c'est même pas frette. J'ai aussi acheté une passe « Backstage » avec les petits pingouins bleu, les plus petits au monde qui vivent dans la région. On est allé de l'autre cote de la grande vitre que tout le monde regarde. Ils sont quand même mignons ces petits pingouins. Ensuite visite ...

From Kaikoura we headed towards Akaroa, but first we stopped at near by Okains Bay to see the highly recommended scenary. We made a stop at the local Maouri museum and then went to a campsite on the beach. I even managed to get Chris to play a little frisbee on the beach before settling in for the night. Again it was a site with flushing toilets and showers, but it felt a little more rural. We were starting to think that this would be the level of ...

... had to work today so we said goodbye to him and the three of us headed back to the apartment.

When we got back, Bex & I had a great time catching up while exploring our huge 4 floor building, which we seemed to have mostly to ourselves.

Eventually we settled in the movie theater which had satellite tv and - more importantly - plenty of movie channels!

So we watched a couple of ...