Day 72: Ninety Mile Bay

So last night we headed up onto the northern tip of the north island, and got extremely lost trying to find our campsite and eventually ended up in the right area, just the wrong campsite which was slightly annoying. But the owner of the campsite was lovely and there was a crazy Maori guy living there too, who insisted on calling us baby and made us have tea with him as he told us about his fishing he had been doing the day before. Currently there is a huge snapper fishing competition thing happening on Ninety Mile Beach and the winner gets $30,000 dollars and currently the biggest fish is about 10kg. We then went down onto the beach and had a little nap in the sun.

Day 71: Waitomo Glow Worm Caves

Last night we drove up from Lake Taupo to Waitomo, and today we went off black water rafting down the caves. Basically your in a wetsuit in a little black rubber ring and you float down the underground rivers in the caves staring up at the glow worms. It was actually really quite relaxing, even though I hate the thought of being stuck in a cave and I get slightly claustrophobic. But it actually made me forget about my slight dilemma of where I was going to be living when I get to Melbourne, as I still don't have any where to live! The photos are also not that great seeing as it was pretty dark in there and the go pro didn't really pick up any of the pictures- so if your interested just google Waitomo Glow Worm caves and I'm sure some picture will come up of the worms we saw!

Our seriously attractive attire

Clemmie was loving it

Day 70: Bungee Jump!!!

We decided we had to try out bungee jumping and Tara told us that Lake Taupo was one of the best places to do it in the North Island so we booked ourselves in, except we were going to do a tandem one. I have never been so nervous before, even before skydiving I wasn't scared at all, but the thought of bungee jumping seriously scared me. We watched to guys go before us, and the second one just hurled himself off. It got to our turn and we had our feet tied up and all the harnesses on and then we were both strapped together with our arms around each others backs. Basically the guy says 3, 2, 1 bungee and your suppose to jump, however, we both just stood there at the top of the platform refusing to move until he just pushed us off! It was pretty good fun, no where near as amazing as sky diving though- so I think I will stick to sky diving if I ever get the chance to again!

Day 69: Rere rockslide

We basically found this really cool natural rockslide thing which you slide down on a rubber ring into a pool at the bottom. We took a few videos on the go pro, but videos take forever to upload so I will just have to show you when I get home! Also that evening we then drove back from Gisbourne to Lake Taupo and there was another pretty amazing sunset!

The only picture we got off the rock sliding thing

Day 66: Kaikoura

Last night a fairly big cyclone hit the North East coast of the north island and so today it has slowly moved its way down the coast, which meant we couldn't go whale watching or try and swim with some dolphins which was a bit of a shame! As we were leaving Kaikoura we came across this amazing little shop on the side of the road selling crayfish so we decided to stop off. They were huge, genuinely the biggest crayfish I've ever seen and they cost quite a lot as well- so we just shared one of the smaller ones! Then about a mile down the road we saw a huge seal colony so stopped off and watched them for a little bit as they huddled together to stop the rain getting in. Then we headed up to Picton where we were going to catch the ferry across. We had a plan to hide Clem in the back of the van (so we didn't have to pay for another person as it cost another $50), and at first it seemed to go well as she was hidden underneath all our bags and duvets (getting extremely overheated), but then as we checked in they gave us two types of boarding passes and I assumed one was for the van and one for me, meaning Clem didn't have one. We then began to think how to get around this and concluded that she would have to just stay in the van for the entire crossing, not ideal. As we were about to board the boat, the guy took both the boarding passes off me so we managed to sneak Clem on and they never found out, we felt like such bad ass tourists.

Clem hidden under all our stuff, who would ever know!

Day 64: Skydiving over Franz Josef Glacier

Yesterday we decided we were going to skydive at Franz Josef, so we booked it all up online and then today we turned up at the little office where we were told the directions of the airfield. Down a little gravel track we found the hanger and a group of mostly Germans who were also going to be skydiving that day as well. After waiting around for a bit, we were soon kitted up in our seriously attractive red jumpsuits, weird leather hats and some goggles. Before we knew it, we had met our tandem guide who would be skydiving with us and had a quick run through of what we should do once we hurled ourselves out of the plane. We all got into the tiny plane which climbed up to 12,000 feet and we could see the glacier, as well as tropical rainforest and the turquoise sea all at once (apparently the only place in the world this is possible!). I was going to jump out first with my guide called Lee who happened to come from Wales and knew of whereabouts Clem and I went to school etc. We sat on the edge of the plane and crossed my arms over my chest like we had been told then suddenly we were falling out of the plane- all I remember is being upside down and feeling like my entire insides had been left up in the plane- but it was genuinely incredible. Before I had time to realise it, the parachute had been pulled and we were gently floating back down to earth.

Celebratory fish and chips!

Day 61: Queenstown Hill

Today we had a chill day in Queenstown and started off with some extremely yummy ice cream where I discovered creme brûlée flavoured ice cream! We then moved slightly further up the road to Fergburger, which had been highly recommended to us, and the burgers were indeed extremely good. After we felt thoroughly full up we then hiked up Queenstown Hill with Clem hating me every second of the climb up and through gritted teeth telling me she was ok. We finally got to the top and the view was amazing. The rest of the day was spent having another chilly lake shower in Wilson Bay, followed by some delicious 60p pot noodles we have resorted to eating as well as some choccie and a beer as we watched an amazing sunset over Lake Wakatipu.

Fergburger selfie

Finally at the top of Queenstown Hill