Good Bye New Zealand, Hello Austraarrlia!
Trip Start
Nov 26, 2007
1
10
17
Trip End
Mar 01, 2009
Sydney,
Australia
Friday, January 25, 2008
After Franz Josef we eventually left the town and headed into Wanaka. Oh the beautiful wanaka. We fell in love with this town. This is where our wonderful sky dive took place! When we got there in the afternoon we were all ready to go and then there was a small dirt devil right through the area where you are supposed to land, so they called all of the jumps off. I really felt for the 2 poor girls who were actually in the plane, ready to jump and then had to come back down in the plane!
So we travelled back on the next day, Thursday 10th January and committed the unthinkable of jumping from a moving plane at 15,000 ft. Jonathan was absolutely petrified and although i was of course scared, my legs weren't jumping off the floor! When my tamdom guy said 'Ok, lift your feet up' i closed my eyes and did as i was told, knowing that the jumping would be the worse bit
Cinema paradiso, Lake Wanaka
. i can safely say that it was the scariest part, definitely. However, you dont actually have to do anything other than tilt your head back and put you legs round underneatht the plane. The guy on your back pushes you out and all you have to do is worry about how fast you are falling... but only for 2 seconds upon which you reach terminal velocity and feel like you are floating on a cloud of air. it really is amazing and the view, well you can see from the pics with all the mountains and the big lake, not to mention the blue sky it was certainly a very good day for it.After that, we were absolutely buzzing all day! However, we managed to contain ourselves enough to go to the cinema in the evening to watch 'A Mighty Heart' at the local cinema. what an experience! its a very small cinema with sofas to sit on and even a car to watch the film in. At the interval, they serve homemade ice cream and still hot cookies! A really cool place.
The next day we went to Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world. However, we'd pretty much been adventured out by then and done most of the activities on offer so the next day we went to Milford Sound where we overnighted in Te Anau.
Our bus took us all the way out to the sound where we went on a cruise to see all the different waterfalls and the different views, it was fortunately a lovely day and the skys were quite blue
Sky Dive with Elaine
. Shame it didnt stay that way...In the morning at the crack of dawn, the Kayak company picked us up at 5.30am and we headed to the sound. we got totally kitted out to look like ducks and about to step into the water when the whole thing was called off due to strong winds and the possibility of us all capsizing - no thanks! It was such a shame as not only had we stayed purely in Te Anau to do the Kayaks, but we didnt get our money back and had to go on the cruise which we had done the day before - all a bit miffed at having missed our. But there you go, you win some you loose some i guess!
Back in Queenstown, we had a few chill out days not getting up to much except sampling the amazing Ferg burgers - yummy! and a spot of crazy golf at the caddyshack minigolf, where all the holes have some sort of animated model that does something when you pot the ball... like a rocket that launches and the haunted house that has a skull that pops out!
After queenstown we went to Dunedin, the Scottish city of NZ. We went on the Elm wildlife tour and saw some amazing sites. First up were the Albatross as they soared over the cliffs to their nests
Lake Wanaka
. - up to 3 metres in wingspan! Then we travelled for about 40 mins to a small secluded private beach where we watched the little yellow eyed penguins come in from the sea after a hard days fishing and waddle up over the cliffs to their familys. Each one would wonder up to their family, where the mum/dad, would waddle out to great them where they had a sort of cuddle and hello, very very cute. Then the chicks would come out and do the same! When we walked back down from the viewing huts that they had there onto the beach, an amazing site was there, a huge sealion arose from the sea and seemed to pose for us on the sand before turning back into the sea. It was really amazing to be so close to this huge animal in the wild.Our next stop over was at Lake Tekapo. A brilliant blue lake where we braved the ice cold waters (having come from a glacier!) and took a very quick swim and then joined the rest of our bus for a big barbecue. Unfortunately there was too much cloud cover for us to go to the observatory which we had wanted to do, so we looked at the few stars we could see from the comfort of our hostel with wine in hand!
The next day was Christchurch to stay with Sonia and Paul (my Aunt and Uncle). Sonia met us from the bus and took us to their house
Kawarau Bridge bungy jump
. Its very beautiful with amazing views. They were very welcoming and acted as taxis to us the whole time we were there which was very kind (thanks S and P!). On Friday 18th we again rose at the crack of dawn - this time at 4am! to go on a hot ari balloon ride over Christchurch. This was brilliant and very smooth. the best bit was hovering over the ground about 3 metres up and then wooshing up over the hedge at the last minute! In the afternoon, I went and partook in some bone carving with a local maori guy, John. It was really interesting to see how its done and Jonathan likes the necklace i made him!On Saturday Sonia and Paul took us to Akaroa to swim with the dolphins - this time the Hector dolphins as we hadnt had a great experience the first time since there were about 90 people and about 5 dolphins. This time it was totally different, with only 7 people on our boat and over an hour in the water with the dolphins, it was really great albeit the water being very cold even through the wetsuit! That evening we went out with S and P for a curry at the Indian Harbour which was lovely.
Sunday was mainly a chill out day, so we went to see some of the buskers at the World Busker Festival. Then, Monday we had to say good bye to Sonia, Paul and indeed new Zealand and headed off to Sydney.
We went for a wander through and around Sydney on Tuesday. Im ust say im quite surprised how much i like Sydney, its a great city. We did the obligitory photos of the Opera house and had a bit of a chilled out walk which was great.
Yesterday we went on a trip to the blue mountains
Maybe i should jump?
. It was a great day, very packed in with not quite enough time unfortunately, but we loved every minute. It really put the Grand Canyon into perspective as well! On the way we stopped at The Featherdale Wildlife park, which was really cool as it only really has Australian animals in it. We got to stroke a Koala and to feed Kangaroos!Today is another chilled out day, catching up on internet stuff and then its Australia day tomorrow so no doubt itll be all go there too!
missing you all lots, trying to send some sunshine your way! x
