Kiwi experience

is so much fun. This country is AMAZING. We've been driving around for 2 days and we've already seen so much amazing countryside, forests, rivers, snow-capped mountains, waterfalls, coast. It's so lush and green. It's gorgeous.

We're currently in a place called Greymouth, on our way to spend the night at Lake Mahinapua (sic, sorry) where we will hopefully get to go kayaking...we just stopped for lunch at a place with weird "pancake rocks", stacked in layers, and a blowhole. The morning was spent walking round a seal colony, and last night we went jet-boating on the longest river in New Zealand (can't remember the NAME of the river, but anyone who knows their stuff could figure it out, I guess) which was cool, not as scary as I expected, but fun.

This tour is incredibly active. For some reason, Vic and I weren't expecting it to be anything like this - we thought it would just be transport, and we'd be organising everything else ourselves, but it's actually very similar to the Uluru one - they drive you around, stop at various places and tell you stuff to do, take you to accommodation, tell you what activities are on offer...which means you have to take, like, NO responsibility for yourselves. Very relaxing, though it sometimes goes against the grain a bit, it can feel like a school trip but...hey. We get to do and see some amazing stuff this way that I very much doubt we would get to on our own.

It seems like a pretty cool group of people as well. Not too many loud drunk British 18-year olds (in fact none, I think). Excellent.

Everyone reading this would love New Zealand and should come here as soon as...it's just so...brilliant. Kind of like the nicer bits of the UK (note that I initially wrote England there, Victoria, I'm being diplomatic here!!) only better, lusher, greener, prettier, more striking and impressive. It's so incredibly green. They keep telling us about the huge annual rainfall in this area (west coast of the south island) and it's just so weird that a few days ago, we were in Brisbane where they're on water restrictions because the reservoirs are running low. The way the world is organised is...weird.