Rocks, Rapids and Rugby

We were up at dawn this morning to watch England lose their World Cup title with, ooh, at least half a dozen other Englishmen in a sports bar in Nelson. A disappointing 80 minutes made even worse by the roars of a few gobby South Africans sat to our right. And Nadia now can't decide whether she prefers Percy nice hair or Jonny nice legs. What a dilemma. Still, there's always the football...at least qualification for Euro 2008 shouldn't be an issue (whoops!)

So we have been in Nelson for the last day or so and have become big fans of the place - nice bars, live music, very hospitable locals (who were throwing free wine tasters in our direction last night) and, most importantly - Sunshine! Yes, Nelson is officially the South Islands sunniest place.

The last few days have been as busy as ever. Post Nadia's canyon swing we successfully negotiated the Shotover River in Queenstown on a raft. Rapids were ace and we both avoided taking a dip in the ice cold white water (unlike some poor chinese girl on our raft who had an extended and unwelcome swim). From there we headed to Wanaka and spent a morning marvelling at the mountain peaks that surrounded us before driving up the coast to Glacier country. We did a half day hike onto the Fox Glacier which was pretty awesome - not as cold as you'd expect with ice crevasses (see pic), caves and water run-off's that were straight out of Touching the Void/Vertical Limit/Cliffhanger or any other alpine mountain climbing film you might have seen. A quick look at the Franz Josef Glacier (from a distance - we decided climbing two in one day was a bridge too far) then headed up to the Punakaiki national park to see weird rocks and other cool stuff.

We head to the North Island this evening after doing a loop around pretty much all of the South over the last 2 weeks. We are sad to say goodbye to the South's snowy peaks, glacial lakes, rolling hills, and sheep but are looking forward to volcanoes, hot pools and hopefully some more sun. Next stop: Wellington!