Back in Kaikoura

We are now back in Kaikoura, on our way up to Picton for the ferry to the North island tomorrow. Since Franz Josef, we spent a night in a small town called Wanaka. The region is famous for its mirror lakes, we stopped off at one called Lake Matheson and did an hour bushwalk. Quite a few people sky-dived here, the views from 15,000ft must have been amazing. In Wanaka, Ashling and I went for a hike up Mount Iron which turned out to be more challenging than we thought, we were a bit out of breath at the top, wish us luck for the Inca trail in a couple of months!! Wanaka is also home to a cosy little cinema full of sofas and homemade cookies served during the interval. Before driving to Queenstown, we stopped off at puzzle world, there were lots of illusion rooms that confuse your brain. One of them imitates the effect from Lord of the Rings that makes you look small/big at different ends of the room. In Queenstown, we took it a bit easier for a few days, despite it being the adventure capital of New Zealand! On one of our days we took a cruise through the fiordlands of Milford Sound including a trip to an underwater observatory. Another highlight of anyones visit to Queenstown is having a ferg burger. You can see how big the burger is, mine was the biggest you could get with 1/2lb of beef, 2 fried eggs, 8 rashers of bacon and so much salad/sauce! We had a couple more (of the smaller ones) during our stay. On our last day in town we walked up the mountain (another challeneging trek!) to reach the downhill luge track. There was a short ski-lift ride to the top of the track and then 5 of us raced down a few times. We made a really good group of friends over the past couple of weeks, now everybody has seperated as we take different routes to the north island, although we are bound to bump into some of them again. Looking forward to what the north island has to offer. Oh and I finally uploaded a photo of one of the spiders from Cape Trib in Australia!