The Glacier
Today was a rather sedate of 6 hours of climbing a glacier. My god it was knackering!
Early on in the day I got the nickname, Flash: King of the impossible, Saviour of the Universe etc due to my fantastic T-shirt... or my disposition to doing the impossible and saving the Universe, I'm not sure which.
After fastening on our rather fetching ICE TALONZ to our boots we began to hike our way up and across the Franz Josef Glacier (named after the beard of Franz Josef). It was pretty hard going with some tough squeezes and hard going paths but was worth it for the views.
After that the girls and I hooked up with a new friend from the Glaciers, Mhadri (or something... unable to remember her name I simply refered to her as Miss Ireland 2006) for some pizza. Afterwards I made hot chocolate sauce and everyone passed out in bed.

Actually Caving
Using the intense powers of luck and sheer fluke, Charly and I managed to catch a caving trip before our bus was scheduled to arrive in the afternoon. The cave was cool with a lot of scrambling and sliding. There were even some small tunnels for us to squeeze our bodies through and wriggle to freedom.
After that it was onto Franz Josef Glacier to meet up with Laura and Jenny. Was good seeing them again and we arranged to go on a glacier walk the next morning.

Not quite caving
We went out to try and do some caving. Our guide was a cool Ozzie named Mitch who was chatty and had some good banter. Unfortunately the weather was against us and the cave was too flooded for us to get down and scrabble through. So we headed back to base and chilled in the hot tub with some beers. Not much of a day. Just chilling.

Trans-Alpine
Headed out early to catch the trans-alpine express over to Greymouth. The train wound it's way through some spectacular valleys and over some great canyons. We arrived in the sleepy town of Greymouth and chilled out for the rest of the day, finishing off with buying pizzas and chilling out.

Christchurch
We got up early and headed out to the Antartic centre which was the strangest tourist attraction I have been to in a while. It included a storm chamber where you can experience a -18 degree windchill, a hagglund ride which was most amusing and bunmpy and loads of information about survival in the Antartic. After that we cruised up to the Gondala rides that took us up and to the hills around the city to take in the spectacular views.
After that we headed back to town to watch a funny Austrailian street entertainer and take a punt down the river Avon.
Then it was a case of jumping on the tram and riding around taking in some more views of Christchurch.
A fun and active day.

Arrival in Christchurch
We arrived in Christchurch today and took a sedate walk around the park and just missed a chance to be punted along the river Avon. However we consoled ourselves by Charlie cooking us both Chili (don't worry Laurie... not as good as yours) and I made hot chocolate sauce.

BOBBY!
Charly and my room-mate, Paul, headed out to catch the whale-watching tour. I decided instead to head out on a 2 hour fishing trip where you get to keep what you catch.
I met up with the friendly boat driver, Gerrad, and he told me the sea was too rough to go fishing but there was a whale in the bay and we could go and have a look. We headed out and cruised around the bay watching the whale surface and potter around. We then headed out to pull in some crayfish traps. After we got back he let me go off with a crayfish, who I named Bobby, and some blue cod that he had caught the day before. Frankly I made out like a bandit. Once I got back Charly cooked up the blue cod, and I cooked up Bobby. He was delicious. After that we headed down to the local restaurant to buy ourselves some dessert. Very good night.

Kaikoura
The lovely coastal town of Kaikoura beckoned us and we answered it's call. Arriving there we took a walk down the track to see the seal colony. We walked for a bit and couldn't see anything... until we realised that we were only 3 metres away from a bunch of sleeping seals. On a side note: you shouldn't get closer than 10 m to a seal since these things can move and if they have pups they will attack you... so me and Charly were pretty lucky that we didn't get jumped.
After that we decided to blow the budget and headed out to a restaurant to have the nicest food I have had since the Maori Hangi in Rotorua. Also gave a quick phone call to Mum since it was her birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!

Kayaks
Since walking the Abel Tasman didn't seem to do justice to the awesomeness of the scenery I decided to head out with Charlotte to do some sea kayaking along the bays. Our guide was a friendly kiwi named Ally who had some good banter. We cruised around the bays and stopped for lunch in one of them. Was a good day and pretty relaxing, despite Charlie locking her suitcase key in her case and me losing my hat on the bus.

Abel Tasman walk
Laura, Jenny and I all caught the bus up to the Abel Tasman national park. We then caught a slinky little water taxi that took us up to the top of torrent bay, around a 4-5 hour walk from the bus pick up point. I headed off from the girls to go north for a bit before turning back south to meet the bus. It was a lovely place and it's hard to describe just pretty the scenery was.