Dear Blog World,

Am so glad you guys haven't forgotten about me! It's going to be nice once I'm back at home and can get on with my regularly scheduled stalkerage. I miss it, big time.

Skipping back, let's see what else I did since last time I updated. Hrm. Well, I survived the Shotover Jet (effing brilliant!) and Whitewater Rafting, where our group came ____ <-- that close to completely capsizing the raft! It was so strenuous, the rapids were grade four, so pretty darned scary. Well worth the dead arms in the end.

That afternoon we were meant to go River Boarding, but it was pretty falsely advertised so I didn't end up going. (Long story short? The so-called "boards" that we were given were actually flimsy cork boards, and we were given five whole minutes of training before being sent down the river into rapids. My response? Hell, no. Jason went, I climbed up on a rock and did some sunbathing. I also made friends with a horse and a labrador. Good times.)

After that, we headed to the Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers. It poured with rain, and I mean POURED. Never seen so much water in my life. But we were brave, whacked on our wet weather gear and headed out to do our hike. Oh my. I didn't think I would make it to the bloody glacier at all! The hike wasn't very long, but it was about 500 man made steps as well as a natural incline up the side of a gorge. It was awesome walking on the glacier, but bloody terrifying, rain plus ice mixed together is not a good thing! We got back and were completely and utterly drenched.

Headed back to Christchurch again, dropped off half our tour and that brings us to today.

So, hello from sunny Wellington! We crossed Cook Strait last night, jumping onto the North Island soils for the first time, and this morning woke up to the most stunning day so far! Not a cloud in the sky, it's amazing. Thanks to a nifty little restaurant (that encourages table dancing!) in Wellington city that loves Contiki tours to death, I spent last night happily barefoot, enjoying a nice night of alcohol induced karaoke. Fabulous!

Today we had a free day, so we skipped breakfast and slept in late - so good. I miss my sleep. We met up with a couple of girls from the tour, wandered around, bought some snacks and headed for the beach. I spent about thirty minutes attempting to introduce my pale legs to the sunlight, but all that happened was that they turned blotchy and itchy from the sand. Damnit. We're going to have a cruisy day now, and just stroll around town. It's really great, minus the fact that we're on the 7th floor of our hotel, bleh, lifts.

Not much else to update again, most of the fun adventure stuff was done in the South Island. I think it'll be a bit more relaxing now. Fingers crossed we get good weather, eh?

Chat soon! (And I do hope you're being nice to Bella and Lucy while I'm away.)

Love,

Aly