Awake nice an early by the arrival of this helicopter so we packed up and got eaten alive by the carnivorous sandflies.

Drove to Monowai Lake and had some lunch, then decided to check out Te Anau up the road for some treks and all that wilderness stuff.

Spoke to a really helpful girl in the DOC office who organised our lives for us. She sent us on our way with a 2day trail-less trek up our sleeves.

With the thought of the next couple if days being food/shower/people free, we checked into a serviced campsite in town. The usual routine then followed; Jeremy does tech geek stuff on the internet whilst Victoria cooked lasagna for dinner.

After which, a complete change in roles occurred; Victoria ripped a hole in the airbed (and broke a head torch). Since being in NZ Victoria has turned into the hopeless case that breaks and misplaces everything and Jeremy is the hero that fixes everything.

(Although he didn’t actually successfully repair it. And he still can’t cook).

Woke up to the sound of the rain and the he/she’s kicking the crap out of each other.

We (very briefly) washed in the river, hypothermia potential raised considerably. We then got all our rain gear on and started ‘The River Walk’. We walked for an hour and got bored so turned back. We met a couple on the way back who asked us if we had seen any birds. Jeremy replied “Just a couple of ducks” to which the dude asked “What kind of ducks?”. Jeremy looked at Victoria who shrugged so he said “Just some grey ones”. The persistant guy then asked “Yellow heads?”. “Nope, just normal grey ducks”. At this point the woman piped in with a smarmy “Yellow heads are the small endangered birds, not ducks.” V & J moved swiftly on before they caught each others eye and laughed in the bird geeks face.

Drove to McLeans waterfall and Jeremy climbed up rocks, tree roots and mud slides to get to the top, where he got some pretty cool snaps.

Carried on to Lake Hauroko where we found a secluded spot in a field to set up camp. A cheeky bird and his mate were very curious as to what was going on in their neighbourhood and flew around us for hours, and weren’t shy about it.

Jeremy’s new Bear Grylls shoes had forced him to make a fire, which saved us a few pints of blood, but we still got ravaged by the sandflies. Jeremy’s ankle got completely gang raped.

12 pancakes left Jeremy feeling physically sick. Things got a little touch and go when he brushed his teeth and got a nostril full of a poorly travelers poop. With the remaining 2 pancakes on the dashboard (Jeremy couldn’t bear to throw them away, even if he had to inject them directly into his stomach) we headed to ‘Nugget Point’.

We walked to the lighthouse, enjoyed the view, spotted some seals and had to imagine the penguins existed. We weren’t as dedicated as the penguin groupies and gave up after 30mins.

We drove to a remote campsite where the weather was nice enough to hold the rain whilst we put the tent up, cooked and ate dinner. Super lucky. Also got to see some more lesbians, and these ones were busy ‘working out’. Yes this may sound like one of Jeremy’s fantasies but I can assure you it did not resemble a dream in any shape or fashion. Unless your wish is to be beaten up by two very rough, manly, muscular, broad, kickboxing lesbians who could (and probably have) bite a chickens head off whilst tearing a phonebook up with their bare hands. Each to their own i suppose.

Famous boulders…tick! Not much to report, they were indeed a load of boulders, but it was lovely weather so it was nice to break up the drive to Dunedin with stroll along the beach.

Dunedin is another wierd NZ town, the only Scottish aspect being the lonesome dilapidated kilt store.

We decided to go on a mission to get Jeremy some walking boots that don’t slice his heels off. He skipped out the store (after several suicidal hours discussing the advantages of shoes v. boots) adament that his new shoes were going to change his life as he was now the proud owner of the same shows as Bear Grylls. He will now be able to make a shelter out of some pubic hair, a hair pin and a small pebble, or whatever Bear Grylls does.

All this shopping makes Jeremy a hungry bear so Victoria headed to the supermarket whilst he repacked the car as our organised mess was becoming more ‘bomb site’. He then felt it necessary that Victoria knew where absolutely everything lived. She nodded, when actually she was wondering whether they needed more garlic.

Homely shepherd’s pie for dinner as the campsite had an oven, which was sweeeet.

Wind really went for it at 4am as our trusty tent struggled to stay pegged in.

At 8am we packed away in the wind and had the last of the cocopops then headed to a more sheltered area for one hell of a refreshing swim!

We stripped down from cold weather gear to bikini and boardies and ran from the car to the lake, dived under, screamed, then ran back to the car. Passersby must have thought we were nutters.

Drove to mt cook alpine village where there was a bad weather report. This, in combination with Jeremys blisters and Victoria’s increasingly painful neck (sleepless and cold nights ought to do it!) made us keep driving.

Next stop was the Clay Cliffs down a 10km dusty road where we met some yocalls who had never been out of NZ. Stuck in a quick visit to New Zealands largest earth dam, was a pretty big mound of earth.

Trucked on to Oamaru where we stayed at The Olive Grove owned by a very annoying kiwi who told Jeremy off for driving (5km/h) too fast down his driveway. But there were cool fluffy cows so everything was all good.

No ballooning, and this time we agreed. It was v.cloudy and windy, so we drove to Lake Tepako, a gorgeous turquoise blue lake.

Saw an inter-racial lezbo couple for the first time. Tick.

Went to The Pines campsite recommended by Clive & Sarah, and what a view! We pitched our tent on the waters edge of a massive glittering lake at the foot of Mount Cooke, a snowcapped mountain surrounded by bright blue sky, white fluffy clouds and deep green pine trees.

Worryingly another couple who had pitched their tent near us moved to behind the forest for shelter from the howling winds. We decided to brave it for the sake of the view (Jeremy hit the disappointing 10minute mark due to weather conditions).

The wind dropped of and we drank beer, munched on pasta and had hot chocolate all to the back drop of the mountains. Ha 1-0 to the campers.

The smell of grilled bacon welcomed us back into the real world. It also made us put down the porridge and go in a hunt for pigmeat. At the local store we were offered ‘fish and chip’ sausages, which would have to do.

Jeremy attempted to cook the miscellaneous meat by putting it in a pan and watching it burn.

We headed to the harbourside town of Akaroa via another windy scenic road. We walked along the harbour, ate fudge (Victoria, the chocolate hungry monster triumphantly demolished the bag while Jeremy was busy taking photos), went to the lighthouse, laughed gayily at some seagulls and skipped hand-in-hand across meadows of blossoming buttercups.

Jeremy swam in the sea at Le Bons Bay on the way back to the campsite, then we packed up and headed off back to Christchurch for that bloody balloon trip!

On the drive back we saw a big tumbleweed drift across the road. We had never seen tumbleweed before, and Jeremy thought it only existed in cartoons. Victoria took evasive action and successfully drove into it.

At the Christchurch campsite we met a couple called Clive & Sarah who were just finishing NZ and heading to Vietnam tomorrow. We gave them our 500,000dong note we had accidently kept hold of. In return they gave us their kiwi card (10% off certain campsights) so Jeremy is now Clive at campsights. We also found some cocopops and squash in the Freebie Bin in the kitchen so that’s karma baby.

Had a few beers with them (they got a tad more interesting after this) and shared spag bol.

Fingers crossed for ballooning tomorrow.

So the combined effort of no sleep for two nights and some shiny new blisters concluded that we wouldn’t do another trek today, instead we would head back to Christchurch to rebook the ballooning.

On the way we picked up the crazy Spanish couple that had slept in the shelter the first night who were hitchhiking their way to Christchurch. The dude seriously reminded Jeremy of Manuel from Fawlty Towers and he was close to sniggering whenever he spoke. “Dragon Fly, I know na ting!”

We stopped at some famous boulder things that geeky people climb when they run out of World of Warcraft games. Victoria did some good pointing and Shrek quotes. “Thats a nice boulder I like what you’ve done with that boulder”.

In Christchurch we rearranged ballooning for Sunday and went to Countdown (again!) to pick up some burgers to fry for lunch on our way to Okains Bay.

The best drive ever! The views were even more stunning than anything we’d ever seen. New Zealand just seems to get better and better.

Found a sweet camp spot and Jeremy set up in 8.30mins (a new record!). We swam in the lagoon, showered (it had been a while!), then Victoria washed all our clothes and cooked up a very yummy curry with chicken and everything!

Squeeky clean and with full tummys we went to bed. Jeremy was woken by the sound of Victoria sniffling as some noisy neighbours had decided to camp next to us (out of the whole site!) and keep her awake. Three sleepless nights was just too much for her. Earplugs and some squirlies seemed to lull her to sleep.

Actually managed to get a trek in. One called Bealey Spur Track, the wind was still too gusty for The Avalanche Trek (the one we originally wanted to do), however this trek did go to an altitude of 1050m and took us about 5hrs nonstop uphill ’steep and rough’! The views on the way up were out of this world, Victoria nearly passed out at the end due to lack of sleep, and Jeremy started to walk like a spastic-THE BLISTERS ARE BACK!

The views were absolutely beautiful and well worth the blood, sweat and tears (literally all of the above bodily fluids left one of our bodies at some point). Also met some cool people from Chicago and a fruit loop from Scotland called Duncan who wet himself when Jeremy asked his advice about his boots.

Back in the village we bought some celebratory beers as Victoria had been talking about them the whole way down.

At camp Jeremy went off to gather firewood “Me alpha male, me hunt and gather uh uh”, he came back with a small tree. Meanwhile Victoria befriended a dutch dude so she could steal his mince beef.

Another sleepless night for Victoria as she was freezing her socks off, even with hat, socks, two jumpers and tights on. We will have to do something about this as Jeremy isn’t allowed to sleep either anymore as he is being updated hourly about Victoria’s body temperature.

A quick phone call at 4am determined that there would be no ballooning today. We could wait no longer in strange and pikey Christchurch, so headed 200km west to Arthurs Pass for some pretty cereal trekking, suggested to us by Matt and Amanda.

No matter how enthusiastic we
were this was just not going to be an activity day. The crap windy, rainy weather prevented us from doing any worthwhile treks (tramps, as they call it here). The wind was reaching 100km/h at 1000m, which is where we would be walking along narrow ridges over sheer cliff faces. Not up for that.

We were feeling too stingey to pay for camping so went to a freebie 15km out the village. Had a delightful longdrop toilet (complete with flies, cockroaches and many years of poop) and a cool concrete shelter with a fireplace (complete with crazy Spanish couple sleeping in it).

Buckets of rain and gale force winds didn’t stop Jeremy from setting the tent up or Victoria from cooking up a potato curry in the tent porch (alright for something without any meat apparently).

Victoria didn’t sleep a wink as she was sooo cold. Jeremy did. Bastard.