Decided to stay in Wanaka as we heard it was nice chillaxy place and it has beautiful surrounding mountains and a lake. On the journey from Makarora, we visited Lake Wanaka and stopped at some other nice spots for photos.

Wanaka is nice place to chill out. We resisted doing a sky dive as we are saving that for Taupo – the classic sky dive spot which is our second last stop. The only thing about leaving it until the end is that it could be cancelled at the last minute due to weather conditiions. This happened to Claire, a girl who is travelling with us on the stray bus. She did get to jump the following morning though. Anyway we decided to visit the highly recommended Paradiso Cinema in Wanaka. The seats are big comfy sofas and you can even sit in a Morris Minor.

You can also order dinner which is served at intermission. It’s a really quirky funky cinema that has very tempting still warm fresh baked cookies, beer, wine and loads of other goodies to choose from.

The next morning we bused it early to Queenstown as I had to had in my backpack to be repaired (feckin allergic), we were meeting Kate’s friend Michelle and we had to book in for the Nevis Bungy jump. Now all along I said I’d never do a bungee as I reckoned the adrenaline wouldn’t even get a chance to kick in, it would be over so quick. Anyhoo for the last few weeks and some persuasion fom Kate, I kinda thought well I might as well try it or I might regret it. So we said we’d do the Nevis (134 metres) well you may as well go the whole hog, right? Off we went and I was surprisingly relaxed all morning – I even dozed off on the way there for feck’s sake. Still no nerves when we got there and they harnessed us up. Funnily enough Kate was pretty nervous and i thought i would be the nervous one.

Started getting a bit hyper and excited after a while but not the pertrified feeling as I had totally expected. I had really expected everyone to be really pumped and hyper or at least nervous but everyone seemed to be calm, collected and even after jumping people were simply smiling but not ecstatic in the slightest. So my turn came around and they plonked me in the chair to harness up my feet.

Still all good and I bunny-hopped out to the edge. And then I looked down…..and the fear rushed through me. The guys working there are really good though,, he literally stopped me looking down, removed my hand which was clamped to his tee-shirt and told me to look out ahead and on his count jump off. And without analysing it (again very unlike me) that’s exactly what I did!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/3210886695/in/set-72157612775954272/

Very liberating feeling, free-falling through the air and there wasn’t a big jerk as you bounce at the end, just a feeling of pressure on your ankles. Fantastic but as I had suspected, it’s over way too quickly, I reckon if I could have done it once or twice more straight afterwards I would have got the rush I had expected. Still though I’m glad I did it and I’m totally psyched up to do the sky dive now.

Spend the next day hiding from the rain and then strolling around Queenstown, which is such pretty town carved into the hills. The following day saw us making the 13 hour round trip to Milford Sound. We had some nice stops on the way……..

but it peed rain for most of the time we were there, which is one way made it spectacular with all these crazy waterfalls forming everywhere. Probably the way Milford Sound should be seen. But it also made it very steamy, foggy and us pretty sodden!!

And so, apart from brief stops in kaikoura and Christchurch to break the journey, that pretty much finishes our journey in the South island. Scary, it’s been a very quick couple of weeks and it’s not long now before I leave for South America. Until next time, check out my photos & videos on……

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157612775895130/  http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157612775954272/  http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157612809066443/