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.