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!