I'm back in Nelson after an adrenaline-filled week in Queenstown, which finished with a tantalising job offer that i had to turn down. Must move on, hey its a shame.

The Canyon Swing was my last act of madness in Queenstown. You jump off a platform suspended over a canyon and freefall for 60m (the length of 2 boeing 737s), and the most sickening feeling in the world. You then soar into a 200m arc to complete a total fall of 109m, falling at a rate of 120kmph. Horrendous. I would do a thousand skydives before doing that again. I was the pathetic member of the group who refused to jump and tried to bail out. After 5 minutes of arguing they had to give me a little shove! The swing part of it was admittedly fun, but the freefall was truly ghastly - i exhaled the most horrendous sound. Feel free to click on my photos to enlarge them and to visit www.canyonswing.co.nz to get a better impression.

This is my second day in Nelson now. I went on a 3 hour horse trek yesterday up into the mountains and was chuffed to even canter a couple of times after my awful display of how not to trot in Scotland several years ago. Today i have adopted the wide-legged stiff cowboy walk to attest to my latest adventure. My bank account tells me this is my last slice of action to be had in New Zealand. I've just another day to vege out in Nelson and acquire a load of books for further vegging in Fiji in a few days. Goodness knows how i'll cope with the switch from 2 to 26 degrees, but hey, i'm sure my pasty skin will appreciate the change.

My favourite location - paragliding at Nelson, with views of the Abel Tasman

Paragliding in Queenstown.

Hangliding at Queenstown - me at the controls aaaaaagh!!!!!!

OK, Queenstown has brought out the worst in me. I think i may have undergone a personality transplant. Within three days i have gone jetboating, white water ratng, hangliding and paragliding. I am debating a bungee jump for tomorrow, seeing as i'm still here!

Hangliding in Queenstown was amazing - its such a different experience to paragliding. The take-off is seriously scary and you land lying down and skimming along the grass - Matt made us come in or a really fast landing to get a big ground rush! We did loads of dives and even a half loop. Amazing experience with incredible scenery (i'll upload some photos of it when i get through my card), but you're in the air for only about 10 minutes coz you're losing height all the time (no thermals here, sniff). Had a bit of a rush when Matt made us dive at a row of bushes on a sharp hill and pulled up at the last moment - great fun!

White water rafting was easily the scariest thing i've done though. I had one and a half hours on a grade 5 (out of 6 grades - 6 being unraftable!) river and prayed to not fall out the whole time. The girl next to me did, and it was really scary. I can honestly say i enjoyed not one bit of it - except perhaps the last rapid when we were allowed to stop paddling and actually hold on for dear life! I paid for a double package where i got to go on a shotover speedjet down a tight canyon. As a single traveller i got a front seat at the side of the boat. It was exhilarating. Every time we got within inches of a rock the driver would turn us into it so it felt like we would crash. You have so many 'i'm about to die' moments. It's really thrilling.

Today i turn down the pace and take a jet boat for a few hours up a river before disembarking for a bush walk through Lord of the Rings areas. I think my body needs this break! A few days ago i went for a leisurely daytrip to Milfrod Sound in the Fiordlands. It was a spectacularly sunny day and there were millions of waterfalls after several days of heavy rain. They hadn't sighted dolphins for months but we saw a pod swim with our boat and also got to sea seals and cormorants, so we were really lucky.

I definitely made the right decision coming back to the south island. I have had the fortune of stumbling into another excellent hostel with good company and an owner who has done every activity under the sun and really encourages you to embrace your fear and get the full Queenstown experience. I'll be sad to go in a few days, but glad to see Nelson again before leaving New Zealand for good.

I want to immigrate.

Paragliding at Nelson.

I have an amazing ability to always find the slowest internet in town. Maybe they gear up their computers here to match the easy going pace of life? This is my first night in Queenstown, in a delightful hostel with people who have mastered the skill conversation, unlike the YHA i endured in Wellington that seemed to be filled with screeching schoolkids. Shudder.
Queenstown is GORGEOUS. I feel like i'm in Canada again, and am anxiously searching for any sign of nordic skiing. The flights from Wellington through Christchurch to Queenstown were amazing, and i was able to gleefully tick off that i had sort-of-seen all these towns down the coast that i had skanked. I've been travelling all over the place the last few days, my routes matching the scatterbrain state of my decision making. All in all, i am amazed at the sights i have seen from coach, ferry and plane. New Zealand rocks.
Highlight of my journey from south to north: passing Blenheim's "Emergency Power Facility" (a fenced yard containing a heaped pile of what looked like driftwood)
Highlight of my journey north to south: boarding a propeller plane in which one engine had to be jumped started before we got on our way.

I am an ejit. I've been in Wellington only 3 days and have decided that my pining for the south island has warranted the expense of 3 air fares just so i can go through the trauma of leaving it again in 2 weeks. This isn't to say that i dislike Wellington, it's fine really. But i guess that's all it is, just fine. Whereas Nelson is wonderful, and i wish i were there. I've been mulling over my itinerary for the north island and realised i wasn't excited about it, and have been having Gollum-like debates without myself as to whether i should leave New Zealand having visited Queenstown or not. I was always of the frame of mind that Queenstown is just an adrenaline junkie place that i wouldn't enjoy and is too expensive anyway. Now i'm craving adrenaline rushes and have forked out a not-so-handsome airfare to get there. Then of course there's another opportunity to go back to Nelson - i don't know how i pulled myself away before. I loved such a small laid back town in a gorgeous environment and a wonderful hostel. My bank account officially hates me, even more so after this very expensive change of heart. I reiterate: i am an ejit.

Guess what i did yesterday? It turns out that paragliding was not enough - i needed another adrenaline fix. I meant to move on to my next location but the weather forecast was too good to pass this up. I do believe i have skydived in one of New Zealand's best locations - the Abel Tasman bay, with golden beaches, snow covered mountains and even a view to the North Island. I had a bit of a sniffle before going up and after plummeting through winds at -15 degrees i now well and truly have a full on cold. I was up for staying on in Nelson another day to go hangliding, but now i'm staying on just to get mothered by my hosts. Excellent. I fear i may not get to the North Island because i'm having far too much fun here and feel at home in my hostel - i almost feel like a full time resident here. We shall see.

OK, i have truly been a whingeing Pom. My last few posts were appalling. I left the glacier country a few days ago and spent 11 hours on a bus going to Nelson - plenty of time to scroll through my pictures and to think about where i have been and where i am going. It was a torrential rainy day for the whole drive but the rain brought snow with it and i got to enjoy the gorgeous sight of snow-dusted glaciers and mountains, and then a ferocious coastline. I also got to thinking of how ridiculously lucky i am to be here. Since then my rocky relationship with New Zealand has turned a corner and Kiwiland has really pulled out all the stops for me. My cheeks ache from grinning so much.

I spent my first day in Nelson mooching around and watching movies - you need days like that every now and then. My hostel is great - just a guy's home where there are always chestnuts roasting on the log fire and the tv is banned in favour of talking (gasp!). There are some great people staying here. I managed to rope 3 of them into paragliding yesterday and it was the BEST EXPERIENCE EVER! Thank goodness it didn't happen at Christchurch coz this was a much better experience. We launched froma massive height and had views over mountain ranges, over the town and the coast and beaches of the Abel Tasman. The pilot was so enthusiastic that we had good thermals as we were actually able to climb higher and do some sharp spins - i never laughed so loud, it was great fun. We were pretty lucky to have such great conditions. We completed our adventure day with a trip to the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour in the next town, full of crazy but inspiring footage. All in all a fantastic day with great company.

Today was almost as perfect. I headed out to the Abel Tasman park (most gorgeous coastline in the world) to do some walking. This place is paradise - the sun shone despite the forecast and i am still buzzing with energy and enthusiasm after a really active day. Nelson is certainly appealing as a really healthy place to live. The town is admittedly quiet, but that's because everyone is out in the moutains or on the coast all day, doing the huge myriad of activities available here.

Tomorrow i intend to head to Picton (i don't think i can bear to stay in a TV-less hostel and miss the tomorrow's episode of Desparate Housewives now that it has FINALLY caught up with when i left the UK!) to do some more walking and enjoy some wildlife, but i might be persuaded to stay on another day and do hangliding or maybe even a skydive if the weather forecast looks good.

Still grinning!

The girls at Bondi, and.....guess where?!

Canberra - view from parliament, and war memorial

Kata Tjuta reflection

Uluru and Kata Tjuta (in the distance) sunrise

New Zealand continues to torment me. I've travelled across to the west coast to kayak and skydive in the glacier country. The only kayak company has gone on holiday and the skydiving is cancelled due to poor weather for the next 2 days, after which i am moving on to Nelson which apparently has more favourable weather conditions for sports. Grand tally of cancelled activities is 5, and achieved activities is 0.

It has been excellent for saving money though. Today i enjoyed the cheapest and most fun activity of hiking - 5 hours of it. I walked to the Franz Josef glacier and enjoyed a brief spell of sunshine before embarking on a trek around the mountain in pouring rain (really enjoyable). Unfortunately my route got blocked by a rockfall (cancelled activity number 6) so i did lots of shorter hikes, enjoying peaceful tracks all to myself, and even inadvertently climbing a mountain (i took a wrong turn and took quite a long time for me to begin questioning why my 'easy forest walk' had become a steep aerobic workout). I was pleased with my achievement and even marked my territory at the top (5 hours of no toilets!)

The drive over from Christchurch took all day yesterday and went through the Southern Alps. Thank goodness i was on a bus or else i would have stopped every 5 minutes to take photos. Tomorrow i go to Fox Glacier to summon the courage to phone the skydive company again and to maybe go for an ice hike on the glacier, depending on whether my legs are in a state of rigor mortis by then.

New Zealand hates me. Not content in taking $200 from me at customs, it nows sees me cast into a seemingly gorgeous hostel where i get my most expensive trek gear stolen and hae to put up with rude and obnoxious staff who treat you like second class citizens. New Zealand adds more to the mix by throwing crap weather at me to thwart all my plans. Christchurch is a little boring - i did it all in less than day but will have spent a total of 3 here when i am through. What it does have is seriously cheap activities, hence i'm staying here so long. So far i have booked a sunrise hot air balloon trip twice (and got up at 5am twice) only for them to be cancelled coz of bad weather. I had my paragliding cancelled yesterday but today i was very surprised to hear that they were coming to pick me up. We got to the launch site and i saw the first lady go and was excited at how gentle and graceful it looked, so nerves went out the window and i really looked forward to my turn. The next guy nearly plummeted down the hill as the wind picked up so they called it all off - i was so tantalisingly close! I was even more disappointed when i learned that the couple who got to go first (coz they had to catch a flight soon after) had already been paragliding in Queenstown and Nelson. So very unjust. So, i nearly experienced paragliding but it is not to be in Christchurch. I'm changing my itinerary to go to more activity-based towns in the hope that the weather will give me a break once in a while. I had hoped to build up my courage on less-scary sports before i headed for a skydive, but i have one approaching in just a couple of days so it looks like i'm stuck going for the big drop before getting my nerves trained on anything else. Very scary.

As for now, I am pottering around the tiniest city on earth looking for cafes. I fill my days with drinking tea, shivering, cursing the weather, avoiding the temptations of KFC, and reading my books. The one activity i have left to look forward to today is pizza with the girls in my dorm. It would have to be the mother of all winds to cause that to be cancelled. Cue a hurricane.....

I've made it to New Zealand (or "Nu Zuhland") and am terrified that after just one day i am already finding myself saying "yis" and "thinkyou". Shudder. Brisbane was great fun and i wish i had the foresight to stay there longer. The theme park was pretty cool and i enjoyed braving the Superman ride where you are shot into the air reaching 100 kmph in 2 seconds and pull 1 negative G force and 4.2 positive Gs as you are hurled around the track. Amazing. It has made me foolishly brave though, as i now face a paragliding session tomorrow. Gulp. Hayley's parents also took me down the Gold Coast for the day. Surfer's Paradise was pretty trashy but everywhere else was ridiculously gorgeous. I couldn't believe my flight out yesterday - we flew over the Gold Coast before heading out to sea. I was staring down on beaches that were MILES long, and then when we arrived over the west coast of New Zealand it was a long stretch of small bays perched at the bottom of instantly massive moutains that gave way to long stretches of flat farmland in patchwork fields. I'm looking forward to more aerial views tomorrow.

Christchurch is a bizarre place. It is full of Victorian brick buildings, white weatherboard houses, and grey concrete offices, the streets are lined with oak trees, the skies are light blue and neary filled with white clouds, the roads and cars are relatively small, and there are small village-green-like parks dotted about. I have to pinch myself to check I am not in England. The overt friendliness of the people reminds me i am not. I am also delighted to find porridge on breakfast menus (a blessing when you arrive to temperatures of 10 degrees after a stint in warm and sunny Queensland) and highly pleasing exchange rates in shop windows.

I am currently on a quest to find a public phone so i can book more activities. It seems that in its quest to shake off the "looks-like-England-from-50-years-ago" image that Christchurch has perhaps gone a little too far in providing virtually no public coin phones. But i have well and truly adopted the laid back "she'll be right" attitude of Oz and am sure that all will fall into place, perhaps even without any input of effort (or i am adopting the slow-paced Kiwi approach too readily?). Meh, whatever. "It's all good."

I've made it to Brisbane and have spent most of the afternoon giggling with Hayley, just like when she visited in Nottingham. Sydney was cool but busy busy busy (i'm so tired!), but i'm glad to say that by the time i was done everyone agreed that i had seen pretty much everything. Highlights include a mini-reunion with 3 friends at Bondi, getting a salt water shower at the front of the Manly ferry in VERY big swells, nearly falling into Darling Harbour whilst clutching a Golden Gaytime (ice cream), the view of the bridge and city from Luna Park eating fish and chips (with Baramundi - so much tastier than cod), drinks at The Rocks on ANZAC day, city views from the Centrepoint tower for a 10th of the price of a harbour bridge climb with twice the altitude (i'm so cheap), but I mostly loved seeing friends and catching up.

Sydney seems to be a work hard play hard kind of city. The city centre seems to be pretty much geared towards business business business but then you have plenty of harbourside bars and stuff to enjoy once everything (and i mean pretty much everything) shuts at 5. I had a rather distressingly difficult search for bookshops, but was more than fruitfully provided with gorgeous views - i pretty much spent a whole day walking a ridiculous number of miles around every stretch of water i could get to to take photos. Outside the city the beaches become the highlights with Manly being particularly gorgeous - i spent a good hour just watching people surfing at an incredibly long beach. The Blue Mountains surpised me in their scale and beauty. After days of dodgy weather i got the most perfect day for my tour and enjoyed time soaking up some completely different scenery and taking in some cable car rides (very brave for me!) The weather was perfect from then on, and my big reunion day with 3 UBC friends was gorgeously sunny and spent at the Glebe Markets and Bondi Beach.

Brisbane is, of course, sunny and noticably warmer - a good 10 degrees warmer than Melbourne. I'm gonna make this a bit of a Florida-style holiday tomorrow and go to a theme park and hopefully a ride down the gold coast tomorrow. Brisbane strikes me as a very young city. Everything looks new and glassy, i'll be intrigued to go downtown and see what it has to offer. So far i've caused a bit of a furore in preferring Melbourne to Sydney as a place to live. Maybe i could cause a complete shock in citing a themepark as my favourite place in Australia? How cultured of me!