Eating on the hoof in Mexico City!

Chicago was our last stop before we hit non-English speaking countries again as we were headed for Mexico, the originally named capital Mexico City to be exact. We boarded the plane, got out our next guidebook and began reading about our next destination. It was only then that we discovered what an enormous city we were heading towards. 17.8 million people live there, that´s almost the same as the entire population of Australia all in one city!

Not for the first time we turned up in a country with no where to sleep and it was at this point that Ad wished he´d taken more notice in his school Spanish lessons. However, after lots of miming and reading out of phrase books we found ourselves at a little hotel in the old part of town and headed out for our first taste of Mexico. And what a taste it was, Ad´s mouth is still burning, but at least he learnt a valuable lesson, if it´s red, it´s HOT! We spent the next day exploring the city and trying not to get ourselves run over by the crazy drivers who occupy the roads (and sometimes the pavements too!). After a few hours wandering around the little bustling markets and gazing in awe at the beautiful buldings and churches we stumbled into the main square which has in it possibly the biggest flag in the world (pictured above). It´s simply enormous. We had to wait for an almost galeforce wind to blow to get this picture!

We also ventured over to the nearby ruins of the ancient capital of Mexico where we saw (and climbed) the third largest pyramid in the world. The ruins of the whole city are still there including some of the original frescos that date back to about 100 AD. Pretty amazing to see. However, even more interesting was learning of the huge number of traditional human sacrifices that used to take place here, supposedly 25000 in one ceremony that lasted for four days.

Then, after a day of cultural activity we decided to head over and enjoy a traditional Mexican pastime, Mexican wrestling. We couldn´t quite believe our eyes when we arrived at the stadium, there were people everywhere and most of them were wearing skin tight masks over their entire heads emulating their favourite wrestlers. The surprising thing was that these people weren´t children, they were grown men! The atmosphere inside the stadium was crazy as lycra clad, mask and cape wearing wrestlers (similar to those around in the very early 80s) were escorted to the ring by bikini clad beauties. They then proceeded to throw themselves at each other in some kind of mock fighting, elaborate gymnastic routine. If things looked as though they were going the wrong way for the hero's a couple more wrestlers would join in to even things out again (at one point there was even a midget donned in a blue monkey suit jumping up and down on a black cape wearing villain wrestler, weird!).

At the time we thought that this would probably be our most bizarre experience in Mexico City but it fades into insignificance when compared with the next evenings antics. We were just going out for a quiet dinner and a couple of drinks (it tends to always start that way though doesn´t it?!). Dinner passed as planned (although Ad did get a plate of black looking tar, no idea what it was, that´s the problem when the menu is in Spanish!) and then we headed to a traditional Cantina (bar). Sitting at the bar we ordered our beers and then looked in bemusement as the barman wittered on and on at us in Spanish. Eventually he said, ¨I recommend¨ and scurried away. We were quite perplexed but when he returned with a plate of peanuts figured out he must have been offering us a bar snack. A few minutes later he returned with a plate of stuff that looked a bit like raw fish with what looked like a knuckle joint in it. On noticing the bemused looks on mine and Ad´s faces he smiled and did an impression of the tasty nibble he´d created for us. He put his hands on his head to resemble horns and mooed and then pointed to his foot!! BULLS HOOF! Ad and I looked at each other in shock! But were forced to tuck into the gristly, jelly like treat with the aid of some lime juice and Tabasco sauce, nice!

One positive to come out of the evening was that we met a random Mexican girl at the bar who decided that she would like to show us round the city the next day. Meeting her the next morning we discovered that her English wasn´t actually as good as we remembered and we spent most of the day talking in broken sentences like Borat (without the dodgy accent) and miming like fools.

We´ve ´bean´ to Chicago!

In order to get to Mexico City we had to fly into Chicago. That was pretty much the only reason that we decided to go to Chicago but I´m so glad that we did.

Chicago is an amazing place, it feels like a land locked city but it´s on a lake larger than Wales so has beaches for the summer months. It has old areas that feel like you are back in England and the best pizza I have ever tasted. It also has the tallest building in America (Sears Tower, it´s the tallest thanks to Mr Bin Laden) and a sculpture called The Bean!!

We took a lift to the top of the Sears Tower and it was only at this point that the strict block system that the Americans use for their cities really became apparent. It´s crazy just how regimented it all is. Give me the crazed madness of UK cities any day (unless I´m lost and then the block thing is amazing!).

As for The Bean, well you can see for yourself. It´s a huge shiny err.... bean! (it was made so that it reflects the skyline of the city in its curved surface and looks really cool!).

That´s enough of culture and all that, the main thing that attracted me to Chicago was the Baseball. Which brings us to our last day there, Ells and I are standing outside Wrigley park (home of the Cubs) with 2 lovely tickets. What I didn´t mention is that neither of us have any idea of the rules of baseball or how it all works.

However, the atmosphere was great and you never have to move from your seat. They bring beer and hot dogs to you while you try and figure out what the hell is happening. We were lucky enough to have fantastic seats that were 10 rows back from first base and a very helpful steward sat nearby who told me all that I needed to know.

For the record Cubs beat San Fransisco 12:1, but there were no home runs. This now brings me onto the other American sport that I discovered this day. Beer pong! Basically a pasting table with a triangle of bear glasses either end. The objective, to get a ping pong ball into the other persons glasses (making him drink them) before he can do it to you. A mix between basket ball, ping pong and drinking. Only in America!

Our time in America (especially Disney!) has definitely changed my views of this country and most of his inhabitants. But, having said that, there are a lot of really fat people living here whos diet consists soley of McDonalds!

The Grand Canyon to London Bridge - only 300 miles?

Got to say that three nights in Vegas was definitely plenty and we were kind of glad to be back in our car heading onto our next destination, the Grand Canyon.

We had an awesome campsite close to the canyon but Ad was really disappointed as all fires (even smoking!) were banned due to the heat.

We rose really early the next day as we were planning to hike a short way down into the canyon. In one ridiculous moment (while sitting in our freezing cold camper van somewhere in New Zealand) we had considered trying to hike all the way down and back out in the day. So glad that we dismissed that idea as one extremely fit, twenty something American marathon runner had attempted this foolish escapade a couple of years ago and sadly never made it out of the canyon alive. So, armed with lots of water and wearing our caps, as instructed by park officials, we headed down into the canyon. Now, canyon hiking isn´t like normal mountain hiking. You have to do the easy part first when you´re feeling pretty fit and the weathers that litte bit cooler, then, just as the sun starts to reach it´s peak and you´re feeling pretty shattered you´re faced with a long upwards struggle to get out again!

The views inside the canyon were just amazing though. To be standing inside something that enormous (we went just a sixth of the way down) that has been formed through erosion is mind boggling, really hard to comprehend.

We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves by the time we reached the top of the canyon again, all that exercise and it wasn´t even lunch time! Inspired, we decided that a hike along the rim seemed the perfect activity for a swealtering hot day. Again, the views were just breath taking. Different rock formations and sections of the river could be seen with every turn and each one seemed more impressive than the last. Got to admit though that after hiking along seven and a half miles of the ten mile trail we were absolutely starving and so gave up and caught the shuttle bus back.

And so it was time to begin the ridiculously long drive back to LA. How surprised was I when during this seemingly endless journey Ad exclaimed, ¨there´s a sign for London bridge!¨ Now, Adam quite often makes random statements to work out whether or not I´m listening to him so I wasn´t sure if I should take him seriously but sure enough after another couple of miles there was indeed a sign for London Bridge. Looking it up in the guide book we discovered that an American bloke had bought the bridge when the Government put it up for sale in the late 1960´s. He´d then had it flown over to the States where he´d reconstructed it in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. Turns out that he was expecting Tower Bridge and so was quite disappointed with the finished thing!! Being English we had to go and see it and so off we set to see London Bridge surrounded by a very tacky supposedly English style village in the middle of the USA desert, extremely surreal!

Viva Las Vegas!

From the heat of camping in Death Valley we headed south to Las Vegas (Wahooooooo Viva Las Vegas, again as we don´t have sound I sang that in a crazy Elvis style, tank ya very much!).

Sorry, where was I, Las Vegas, one of the places that I have been looking forward to since we left home. We had nowhere booked to stay (unusual that!) so we headed down the strip to find the best place to say. We were shocked when we found that we could stay at a hotel called Paris for the same amount as some of the shabby holes on the strip.As you can guess it is themed on the city, with a huge Eiffel tower, full size Montgolfier brothers balloon and inside, mock french streets (complete with sky!)

Vegas totally lived up to everything that I had hoped and we had an amazing few days. This included drinking for free while playing on the 1 cent slot machines (we are on a budget you know!), watching BIG Elvis (some really fat bloke that sounds just like Elvis but has to sit down for 4 out of 5 songs because he gets tired!), standing in awe watching the fountains at the Bellagio, watching The Producers and generally staring in disbelief at the size and extravagance of this place.

Just a side note, while watching the Big Elvis I noticed another bloke in full Elvis getup, we assumed that he was part of the show and would take over from the fat guy before he died of a heart attack. That´s what we thought!! He finished his beer and just walked out down the strip as though dressing in an Elvis jump suit with massive gold belt was normal! Vegas is a little crazy like that.

I definitely gained a few pounds in weight while there but didn´t loose any money, unlike some of the mugs we saw! After 3 nights in Vegas we were glad to move on and what better way to do it than to head off on Route 66 towards the Grand Canyon!

It´s a hard life!

Death Valley is HOT!

After a great time in Yosemite we headed for Death Valley. Before we got there though we found time to drop in on the biggest tree in the world. I had heard about some of the huge trees in America and where else would you find the biggest tree but in the ¨GIANT FOREST¨ (very imaginative!). We were surprised at just how big this tree was though it WAS giant! (as you can see from the picture). The tree has a circumference of about 30m, madness.

Anyway enough about trees and stuff we were on our way to Death Valley (as we don´t have sound on the blog I said "Death Valley" in a Darth Vader voice for dramatic effect). We had taken the precaution of booking a campsite in advance as national parks get really full in the summer time. We were shocked when we arrived and found that we were the only people camping in the park. The reason for this we discovered later that evening when at 12:30 it was still 105f. Before our hot night, where we ended sleeping outside rather than in the tent due to the heat, we spent a scorching day exploring the Valley of Death (again in a dramatic voice!!). Death Valley is only a few hundred miles east of the lush green, river filled national parks of Yosemite but it is the most arid place I have seen or been in my life. The only sign that there is ever water in the valley is a large flat salt "lake", that is actually 85.5m below sea level. I decided that I would take a walk out into the middle of this lake (don't worry it´s very dry and hard!) to get some good views of the whole valley. Ellie opted for the safer option of staying in the air conditioned car. As I got out of the car I glanced at the temperature gauge, it read 122f which is over 50c! (and the car was in the shade). I can say that the next 20 minutes were the hottest I have ever experienced in my life. The sun blazed down, the white salt reflected all the heat back up and there was a strong wind blowing that was hotter then a hair dryer in my face. I walked for 20 minutes and did not get sweaty at all due to the water on my skin evaporating immediately that it came into contact with the air. You get the picture, it was bloody HOT but an amazing place!!

While we were there we noticed about 10 identical cars driving around that had no markings on them and were covered in a kind of black body cover. We found this really strange and wondered what these weird cars were. We were slightly surprised when we learnt that car manufactures send there new ranges (hence the body cover for secrecy) to Death Valley for heat testing, cool! (well hot actually but you know what I mean).

Smelly Ellie and Stink Boy Dodd!

After an amazing couple of days in San Fran we headed inland to our first American National Park, the famous Yosemite. I don´t think I mentioned but our last campsite didn´t have any showers (you´ve calculated correctly, that´s three nights so far without a shower) and California in July is a pretty hot place so by the time we arrived in Yosemite we were pretty riffy and things were definately about to get worse.

We decided to spend our first night in the Valley to cut down on travelling time the next day. When the bloke at the information hut told us that the valley tends to be slightly warmer at night than the other sites in the park, we took this as a positive meaning that we wouldn´t get chilly, unfortunately though this isn´t what he meant. We arrived at our camp site at about 7pm and it was still roasting. Putting the tent up brought us both out in a sweat and then we had to build and light a fire in order to cook our dinner! To put it mildly it wasn´t the coolest of evenings and to make things worse - there were no showers!

Yosemite was definately worth getting pretty riffy for though. The combination of the huge granite rock faces next to the green forest was just stunning and we enjoyed driving to various scenic spots to take photos and generally enjoy the views (it was way to hot to hike!). A dip in the river seemed like the obvious way to cool down (and get slightly cleaner!) so we hired a rubber dingy and set off down the crystal clear river to find a few quiet spots to relax and swim in.

Although we were getting pretty grimy and we probably smelt a bit we were really starting to enjoy the simple life. Camping in beautiful locations and having nothing else to do with our evenings than cook on a fire and gaze at the stars was starting to feel like the perfect way to unwind and relax. Although having to store all of our food and toiletries in a metal bear proof box at all times did counteract this relaxation somewhat!

Falling asleep at the wheel!

So our American road trip began properly with our drive from LA to San Fransisco. Our guide book said that it would take us about 6 hours but it failed to mention that in order to complete the journey this quickly the interstate road needed to be taken and not the road they recommended. Unfortunately we learnt this piece of information the hard way by driving along the recommended and supposedly scenic road. Hours and hours and hours later we eventually arrived in San Fransisco. As you can imagine by this time it was dark, really, really dark and as usual we hadn´t booked ahead and so had nowhere to stay. After driving for what seemed like an eternity along a windy, climbing country road we eventually came to the campsite we were looking for, however, the gates were well and truly locked. We had just pulled into the lay in oposite when a police car pulled up. Slightly anxious (as it was very dark and we were in the middle of nowhere and this guy had an enormous gun) we got out of the car and politely asked in our best English accents if it was OK to park there over night. The policeman seemed surprised at our request but said it was fine and disappeared and we settled down for our first (and fortunately only) night of sleeping in the car!

We slept incredibly well and woke up to find the sun pouring in through our windows. After checking into our incredibly remote campsite we set off into the city to visit the infamous prison.

Alcatraz was awesome. Such a remote and desolate rock stuck out in the middle of the bay, it really was the perfect place to house the USA´s most notorious criminals. Although it had been roasting when we left the mainland the weather on the rock was completely different, really cool and windy, making the experience even more chilling. We knew that we had a ticket off the island that same day and it was still a harrowing place to be, you can only imagine what it would have been like to have been there on a life sentence.

That evening Ad indulged his pyramaniac tendancies by not only lighting his own coal bbq but by also making use of the fire pit next to our tent. Roasting marshmallows and drinking beer - what a perfect way to spend an evening.

The next day was 4th July, American Independance Day. We headed off into the city to join the thousands of Americans who were celebrating by eating at least 10 hot dogs each and swilling it down with extra, extra large full fat cokes. While driving over the famous Golden Gate Bridge we recieved a text message we had been waiting for, our friends Kate and Marcus had had a beautiful baby girl, congratulations guys! Had a great day just chilling out listening to absolutely terrible bands while enjoying a pic-nic overlooking the bay and famous bridge. The celebrations ended with an absoluetly fantastic firework display - the Americans definately know how to celebrate in style.

Disneyland? Are you taking the Mickey?!

Leaving Hawaii with it´s sand and surf (and dead drop outs!) was hard and the next stage of our trip was the part that I really was not that excited about. America had never really interested me and it´s stereo typical Jerry Springer population tended to annoy me. Ellie had decided that we would go to Disney land for a few days which had not really done anything to excite me any more. One thing that I was looking forward to however was the car that we were hiring. Unlike our normal philosophy of hiring the smallest cheapest car that we could, we hired a huge and very powerful DODGE CHARGER (which still turned out to be the cheapest due to some crazy internet deal, wahooo!)

So our first day in America was spent in LA driving the very large Dodge Charger to Disneyland. Now as you can probably tell I´m not much of a fan of Mickey Mouse and all that Disney stuff. That was until I had walked halfway down Main Street, played on the penny arcade and met Mary Poppins. I don´t quite know what came over me but I just walked up to her and Burt, said ¨Hello¨ and had my picture taken with them. So from that point on I was having a great time and thought that Disneyland was amazing! To make things even better there were very few people in the parks so the ques were pretty short and we got to meet Buzz Lightyear!

So with my dislike of Disney conquered it was time to turn to the rest of America. Driving in to LA had been something that I was dreading as everyone we´d met that had been there had stories of getting lost, hundreds of highways and terrible one way streets. In reality it was easy and we drove straight onto Hollywood Boulevard and started our star spotting! (the ones in the pavement not real ones or anything!). We found ourselves outside Manns Chinese Theatre (this is the place of course where all of the Hollywood premiers are held, I knew that!) and went about trying to see who´s hand prints in the concrete were the biggest.

I discovered that Arnold Swartz....(ect) has smaller hands than me, but didn´t get much further through the stars as I was getting in too many peoples photos!

One down side was that Beckham was not getting to LA until after we had left. That´s a shame because he would of course have invited us both over for dinner!

In general I was discovering that America was actually OK, but I still needed further convincing, so, we got in the ¨Charger¨ and headed for San Fransisco. You can picture all of the songs that we were singing along the way, California dreaming, If you´re going to San Fransisco, Do you know the way to San Jose (just south of SF). There are many, many more!

Sun, sea, sand, surf, and dropouts!

We were sad to be leaving New Zealand and our little camper van. To add to this we also had 15 hours of travelling ahead of us. This is the point where you all feel sorry for us and the hardships of travel but don´t get feeling too sorry though as we were heading for HAWAII!! Now before I go any further I must tell about our peculiar journey, we travel from New Zealand back to Sydney to fly to Hawaii, we travel for a very long time and arrive in Hawaii 2 hours before we arrived at the airport in New Zealand. It was the longest Friday 22nd of June ever and all because of the international date line!

Anyway, sorry, Hawaii!!! I had talked Ellie into including Hawaii on our travel plans as I had heard so much about the sun, surf and HULA HULA girls. There was plenty of sun and surf but the only hula hula girls we saw looked like the pre-diet picture you see for slim fast!
Not too disheartened by this fact we did have almost a week of pure sun, surfing and body boarding (even Ells tried and succeeded at surfing on the famous Waikiki beach!).

We did however break up these paradise days with a trip to Pearl Harbour. While there we saw the harrowing original footage of the attack and the single bomb blast that totally destroyed the war ship Arizona. After this we were treated to the most politically insensitive talk ever about the cowardly Japanese and their tirant empire. I think that the Japanese members in our group really appreciated it! We were then taken out to see the sunken wreck of the battle ship that is lying where it was bombed, still with over one thousand bodies entombed!

We were lucky enough to find a very reasonably priced hostel right on Waikiki beach and couldn´t understand why it was so cheap for it´s location. We turned up and the room that we had was fine, which puzzled us even more. All was answered when we found one of the blokes that was in the dorm next door making his own Crystal Meth (some new drug in America that kills your brain). He spent all of his time collecting shells and making patterns with them which he would then proudly show to anyone passing by, very bizarre! Then another guy from the same dorm was found unconscious the first night we were there and was rushed to hospital and resuscitated twice. This we thought was quite hardcore until the following night the bloke that had found the unconscious guy was found dead in his bed after an overdose!!! As you can guess our room was so cheap because it just about one step up from a homeless drop in centre!

Still, the beach and weather were absolutely amazing and we loved Hawaii!

Rotorua and Beer Tour!

Now that we had seen the fantasy sights of the North Island it was time to see some more traditional parts. We drove to a town called Rotorua that is the centre of the Maori culture. We spent an evening watching traditional Maurie dancing that included the very scary Hakka and even better eating traditional Maori food. In order to cook the food they dig a huge hole, fill it with an even bigger fire, wait for the fire to burn down and then put large stones in. They then wait even more time until the stones are hot and then dowse them with water, throw the food on to them and then bury it all in the ground for 3 hours. It would be so much easier just to have a BBQ on the fire in the first place!

The reason that the town of Roturua is the centre of the Maori culture is largely due to the fact that the area is high in volcanic activity. This activity has resulted in a huge number of Geysers (holes in the ground that super heat water and explode without warning, not some dodgy bloke from London!) and as we were here it would be rude not to go and see some of these fantastic natural wonders. So there we are standing behind a small fence about 20 meters away from the largest geyser in the area, we´ve been told that it hasn´t exploded for a few hours so it should be soon. We wait and wait until we think that our presence has broken it, when all of a sudden there was a huge bang and water (well steam!) shot 50 meters into the air (just for the record I screamed with joy at seeming this sight, not because it had scared me as Ells thinks) and continued to do so for about 20 minutes. It really was like nothing I had seen before in my life and defiantly worth getting soaked by steam for (I can´t believe that Ad hasn´t mentioned how bad the smell was! This was the smelliest place I have ever visited in my life, it absolutely stank of rotten eggs, urghh!!). With all of the culture and amazing things that we had seen it was time to bring the New Zealand trip down a level.

We had heard that the famous Lion brewery in Auckland offered tours. We were happy to find that this was true and in no time found ourselves standing in the bottling section, deafened by the clanking of the thousands and thousands of bottles that were being efficiently boxed and sent to some corner of the country. This was pretty cool but the best was to come! As the tour ended we found ourselves in a large bar with beer taps on both sides. Thinking that this couldn´t possibly be true, we were given a large amount of clean glasses and told to help ourselves to as much and as many of the different beer types that were there. HEAVEN!!!!! (we found out after that all of the workers at the brewery get 3 hours free drinking like this every day in the staff bar. Strangely there is a high alcohol dependency problem and divorce rate at the site!!!!!!!!!)

Welcome to North Island, my precioussssss!

After thawing ourselves out in the hot springs we headed to a place called Kaikoura on the east coast. The reason for the visit was to hopefully get the chance to see a wild seal colony. As we arrived at a weather battered outcrop of land we weren´t sure what to expect or even if there would be any seals there. What we saw however was amazing, the seal colony was about 10 meters away from us. It was fantastic to be so close to these animals and they didn´t seem to mind humans being so close to them at all. Unfortunately there were some annoying Germans who decided that the warning signs around the seals didn´t apply to them and walked to within touching distance of them just to get some better photos. We were waiting for the seals to attack and drag them into the sea bleeding and screaming, but we were disappointed.The seal colony was the end of our time on the south island and that evening we boarded a ferry at 9pm and had a very bumpy 4 1/2 hour sail to the north island.

And once again as if in a state of deja-vu we were in a strange city (Wellington) very late at night with no where to stay. No problems though we managed to find a camp site that resembled an ASDA carpark but with showers and a toilet, very nice!! We spent a few days seeing the sights in Wellington before heading to our first real destination on the North Island, Taupo which is famous for the being the closest town to Mount Doon from the Lord of the Rings. We spent an amazing day hiking around the landscape that was used in the film and up to the base of the mountain (that is actually a volcano!). Once again I was blown away by just how breathtaking the scenery in this amazing country is and standing there you could understand why it had been chosen for the film.

News from the Shining Star

While we were in New Zealand we received an update from Melkior about the Shining Star Nursery School that we helped to set up whilst we were in Tanzania.



We were overjoyed to hear just how well things were going with the school. Since we left there have been further improvements including a new toilet being installed so that girls and boys don´t have to share, lots of new playground equipment has been built (I´m sure it all compleys with UK safety standards!) and they now have swings, slides and a roundabout to have fun on during their break times. However, the biggest improvement is that the school now has electricity which is pretty rare in Tanzania. The children are now enjoying learning through listening to CD´s and they also have a DVD player and big screen! Sara and Melkior also organised a school trip to one of the countries amazing National Parks for the children to see the spectacular wildlife first hand. This was the first time any of the children had seen giraffes or elephants etc in the wild even though they live so close.



As you can imagine the Shining Star is now the most popular Nursery school in the area and Sara and Melkior have actually had to stop admitting pupils as the school is up to full capacity.



All of this started from nothing and we would just like to thank all of you who gave your time and money to get this project off the ground.

Hanging around in New Zealand!

So we headed back to Queenstown, which if you know anything about extreme sports is the place that bungy was invented. So what else can you do but give it a bash. We decided to jump from the first ever bungy site, which is a bridge spanning a gorge. It's 45m (about 145 feet in old money) from the bridge to the water below. This sounded fine as we paid our money in a nice warm shop in Queenstown that was very definitely not very high up. It started to seem not quite as fine as we arrived and went to have a look!!! Now consider that Ellie (I will never, ever do one of those bungy jump things) Muxworthy is standing next to me who was definitely thinking it was not such a good idea anymore and you will understand that the next words out of my mouth at this point should be well chosen as not to cause any concern or panic. However what came out of my mouth was "Sweet Jesus, that's a bloody long way down" Whoops!! Backtracking from this initial outburst and insisting that it was all going to be fine seemed to take my mind off the jump and suddenly I was standing on the edge smiling and laughing (before I looked down again). The only thing that I was concerned about was that I would just flop off the platform and look rubbish or stand there for an hour not wanting to jump. So as soon as he said you're ready to jump I leapt out like a fool! I can't remember shouting WAHOOOOOOOOOOOO but evidently I did, very loudly! Having jumped I felt amazing for about 30 seconds until I saw that Ellie was being prepared to jump. It was strange watching, I felt more nervous watching her than i had standing there myself. There were no problems though as El seamed to copy my jumping style and threw herself off the bridge with a crazed vigour as soon as she had the chance!!! All in all we both agree that bungy jumping was amazing and something that everyone should do!!

So after the thrill of bungy we set off towards our next destination, The Franz Joseph Glacier (FJG). Stopping that evening just outside a place called Wanaka (very careful with the spelling there!) on the edge of a lake called Hawie. It was again another amazing spot, with a crystal clear lake and a fantastic mountain range to frame it. New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places in the world and it appears that every corner you turn you are faced with another amazing view!!

Anyway, we arrive at FJG and manage to find a camp ground that was situated in the rain forest. This was really cool and true to it's description there was a forest and unfortunately (lots of) rain. Now rain would not normally be a problem but the following day we were climbing onto the glacier and spending the day exploring. Now not only does the glacier become very, very slippy but it also gets really, really cold up there in the rain.

With this thought haunting us as we went to sleep, imagine our surprise when the next day there was just clear blue sky. We had an amazing (and quite warm) time climbing the glacier and we were also lucky to see "blue ice". This only happens on really clear days when the blue sky is reflected through the ice to make it look blue. This doesn't happen very often as it rains here 250/365 days and when it's not raining it's cloudy!

After all the thrills and large amounts of cold things we decided that we should attempt something less dangerous and a hell of a lot warmer. We headed to the hot thermal springs of Hamner. There are lots of beautiful thermal pools that you can relax and laze in. I love doing adventurous stuff but this was fantastic, although I think we spent too much time in there as I almost got a severe case of water wrinkle on my hands to match that of David Blain!

Milford Sound is snow good in a camper van!

After a great time in OZ we felt sad to be leaving and slightly unprepared for New Zealand as we hadn't really had time to plan our trip. So with this in the back of our minds we landed in Christchurch late one evening. After a good nights sleep and a quick tour of the city sights we sorted out a small camper van at a fantastic price to be our home over the next few weeks.

As you can see the van resembles a small plumbers van with an extra bit added so that you can stand up inside. It was fitted with all the mod cons.... well a bed, a cooker and a fridge (which we soon found out we wouldn't need as the climate was definitely cold enough!!). So off we go on another road trip! After several minutes driving the van I realised that it had probably seen better days and that the pretty black patterns in my rear view mirror whenever we went over 50km per hour were in-fact oil and smoke billowing out of the exhaust. It only took several days for the radio to break, well stop working anyway, which I felt was a curse from Liz and Meg for slating their Cd's! But the van was amazing, and we were having a great time.

At the end of our first day driving we stayed in central south island (Cromwell) and got ourselves ready for our first night in the van. We did have a heater but didn't think that it would get too cold, so only set it on a very minimum setting. This we would discover was a bit of a mistake as Ellie had to put her thermals on and get in her sleeping bag in the middle of the night (her sleeping bag as well as being under the duvet!) and I couldn't feel my feet the next morning. So vowing never to sleep without the heater on a more sensible setting again we headed for Milford Sound.

During the morning the prior day we had heard a rumour that there was a snow storm heading for the area but nothing had been confirmed. It was however later confirmed when we were driving through the mountain pass that leads to Milford Sound and we were faced with about 2" of snow. We were advised by the guy driving the snow plough that this was just the start and that we should get through the pass before the real stuff came! True to his word it did get worse and by the time we had slowly wound our way up and down the pass there was about 5". It was at this point that they closed the road. This was the only road in and out of the village of Milford, so we were stuck. We then discovered that there was no mains electricity in the village and that we would therefore have NO HEATER!!! This was a very chilly evening that seemed to last for an eternity.

However the next morning we realised that it was all worth it. The previous evening when we had driven into the village visibility was down to about 50 meters so we had not been able to see anything. However with the snow storm past and the sky an amazing blue we were able to see some of the most fantastic scenery in the world. Sailing out into the "sound" (a very large lake created by an ancient glacier) at Milford we were treated to even more amazing views and after about an hour more rain (which would be falling as snow on the mountain pass, we were starting to think that we were going to be stuck here for ages!). Getting back off the boat we were pleased to learn that the roads would be opening again and we could continue with our adventure (after a brief stop to throw snow balls at Ellie and give myself frost bite!)