Ed and Nicky's world tour: The Southlands

The 1st place we went to on way down south was Moeraki, with its strangley perfectly round boulders

Dunedin, in the south east of the island, was the first big city in a long while. It was nice to be in a big place, and the Scottish connections were interesting. Nicky loved this antique cloths shop bearing her family name. I loved the proper Cadburys chocolate after months of ropey stuff in South America. We also had our first drinks in a while at Speights brewery and spent a morning at the swimming baths. A cheap way to get clean after a week washing with wet wipes.

After Dunedin we set off down the spectacular (how many times have I said that about NZ?!) Catlins Coast.

We treated ourselves to a few days in a cool little cottage in Curio Bay, right on the beach. Check out our view from the bed in the morning.

The waves crashing on the peninsula at the end of the Bay were incredible, and the petrified forest beyond it proved to us that fossilised trees could be impressive

Moody.....

Sadly there were no dolphins playing in the surf as there are at some points in the year, and worse still we had blue penguins nesting under the building. The young are noisy little buggers, it was comically loud all night. They sounded like a drunken bag pipe player most of the time, but let out massive squawks like donkeys once in a while. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of these shy little creatures one night, by sneaking to the windows, switching teh security loght on and then watch them get a little startled and waddle off to their burrow as quick as their little legs could carry them

Down the road, we visited Slope Point, NZ's furthest point south.

and on a chilly morning visited some beautiful waterfalls

Stopping for sausages, just obeying the sign Officer

A trip to South island wouldnt be complete without a trip to Fjordland. We did the obligatory bus through national park then cruise on Milton Sounds combo from Te Anau. Some of the most beautiful spectacular scenary I have ever seen in my life.

After visiting the Sounds we headed a little north to Queenstown, where I did a pair of bungy jumps (a 241 voucher meant it was rude not to) at the original Kawarau Bridge site. The photos are of my second jump, when I dipped into the ice cold river below.

The chilly view from the top. There was sleet and snow that day.

The view down, 43m to the river.

Nicky watching on

The video is of Nicky being a little alarmed watching the 1st of my 2 jumps.

Nicky had to drive the leg from Queenstown to Lake Wanaka, because I was still full of adrenaline after the jumps and getting so cold. We parked up in a fancy caravan park for the first time, called Aspiring Motor Park, and then spent a day waiting for weather to clear up (who ever heard of too much snow to open up a resort?!) and then had 2 days boarding at Cadrona. It was frighteningly cold up there, the freezing fog iced up your hair, but it was worth enduring the chill for the quality snow and loads of powder.

Crazy iced up pigtails and Shackelton-esque beard action
After the snowboarding we had to raced back up to Queenstown to drop of the campervan and complete the massive anti-clockwise figure of 8 we had done of the south island.