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I've now created a thumbnail gallery for all the pictures I've posted so far.
I've also created galleries for individual days or groups of days to make picture navigation easier, an index of these can be found here. Please note I've not finished creating galleries for all the days yet, give me time and they'll appear, I hope.

4th - 5th Feb, Christchurch
Arrived in Christchurch about lunchtime on the 4th Feb, absolutely knackered after a day and a half travelling, all I wanted was a shower - of course I had to wait for one as my hotel room wasn't ready. I spent most of the time I had to kill hanging around in the cathedral square as there were buskers and other entertainment to be found there. After having an early night on the 4th, I was up early and ready to see more than just cathedral square in Christchurch. I decided to go up the gondola, but when I got near it on the bus I found it was fogged in, so stayed on the bus and ended up in Lyttleton harbour. While there I decided I'd join a nature cruise that afternoon, the views were spectacular and I got to see some dolphins!

6th Feb, Tour day 1 (Christchurch to Lake Ohau)
The Connections tour set off from Christchurch about 8am, we were heading for Lake Ohau. This is when I heard the morning song for the first time and thought "what the f....?", by the end of the tour it was a firm favourite everywhere we went. On the way to Lake Ohau we stopped near Lake Tekapo, and some of the group went for a walk up a nearby hill for views back over the lake. It was a sunny day, and was certainly a hot climb once we got above the tree line, but the views were worth it. Once we arrived at the lodge at Lake Ohau, swimming in the lake seemed like the best plan as it was such a hot day. The evening's entertainment was having to indroduce yourself to the group and answer two questions drawn from a hat..... Later I kicked some Aussie butt at darts, and somehow got myself the nickname Popeye Pete, which was to stick with me for the rest of the tour.

7th Feb, Tour day 2 (Lake Ohau to Queenstown)
The tour took us from lake Ohau to Queentown in the morning, we arrived at the Rydges hotel in Queenstown (which was to be our base for the next 3 nights) about lunchtime, just in time to not have any lunch before going "Mad Dog River Boarding". The river boarding seemed like it would be a good laugh, and how difficult could it be??? The answer was that it actually really hard work and I was absolutely knackered by the end and my calves really hurt where I'd had cramp. The reason it was hord work was that you really needed to swim most of the time to fight the water currents and stay safely in the middle of the channel and away from the rocks. We were after fighting a river with 250Tonnes of water a second flowing in it, as this picture shows there was quite a bit of turbulence even in the calm water at the edn of the trip. Once we'd passed the rapids we got to ride on a float being pulled behind the a jetski, while one of the guides drove it like a nutter and tried to throw us off by pulling tight turns! Finally we had the chance to jump off a cliff at the side of the river, about 11m above the water I think, this was just a bit of a test of nerve, and we found that some of the blokes screamed like girls while doing it (Deano).

8th Feb, Tour Day 3 (Milford Sound)
An early start was required today, breakfast was at 5:30am, as the bus left for Milford Sound at 6am. The early start was required because it was a 4 1/2 to 5 hour drive to Milford Sound from Queentown despite not being very far in a straight line, we had to go around the mountains. Didn't manage to sleep on the bus, so I watched Deane (then the driver) nodding off in his rear view mirror. Once we reached Milford Sound (after a few unplanned travel sickness stops) we went a cruise around the Fjord (yes it's should really be called Milford Fjord). It was really beautiful and we were lucky as there had been recent rain so we got to see quite a few waterfalls. After long drive back and something to eat we went out in Queenstown for he evening, I think.

9th Feb, Tour day 4 (Queenstown)
Today was the day to do mad things in Queenstown, so..... In the morning I joined a number of others from the tour on the Dart River Jet Boat and Wilderness walk. For our money we got over 3 hours of jet boating / walking around in the forest next to the river. That's much better value than the nearby Shotover Jet where you only get 20 mins for your money. This was an excellent, if slightly wet morning. In the faternoon 3 of us went Swinging, Canyon Swinging that is. Basically you throw yourself off a platform 109m above the canyon floor, you then freefall for about 60m before the ropes take up the slack and you begin to swing in a smooth arc accros the canyon, once you've finished swinging they pull you back up, ready to go again for only $35... This was definately one of the highlights of the trip for me, I think it was probably the most scary, and most exciting thing I did in NZ. This evening saw us go out in Queenstown again, this time it was "Ladies Night" in the pub, so they had a (topless) chin-up competition for the blokes, which non of us entered as there were too many blokes who were good at it in the pub, and humiliation isn't always a good thing. Later there was a dancing competition for the ladies on the bar. Unfortunately this was spoiled by the bloke they got to judge it as he appeared to have left his white stick at home and ended up choosing a girl who couldn't dance as the winner.

10th Feb, Tour Day 5 (Queestown to Fox Glacier)
Another early morning on the bus, though not as early as the Milford Sound trip. This time we're heading for Fox Glacier. We arrived there at around lunchtime, and just had time for a snack before we headed off up to the glacier. Unlike some I decided not to do the heli-hike to the top of the glacier, but to save some money and just do the guided trip onto the lower end of the glacier. The walk to the glacier took about 1 hour 20 mins, through rainforest, and we were all hot and sweaty by the time we got to the glacier, but the coolness of the air on the glacier soon changed that. It was amazing to hear that the glacier was actually growing despite the heat. In the evening Deane took us down a local trail to see the glow worms, unfortunately he was the only one with a torch which led to near (and closer) misses with the trees.

11th Feb, Tour Day 6 (Fox Glacier to Christchurch)
We woke to find it was pissing with rain so the planned morning walk before the coach set off for Christchurch was cancelled and we just headed for Christchurch. The drive took most of the day, and the rain was persistent, you could say that rain's timing was rather good as we were stuck on the coach all day anyway. On the way we stopped and had a look around a Jade factory. It was the last night for the people only doing a six day tour so we all went out together into Christchurch, first for a meal, and later for drinking and dancing.

12th Feb, Tour Day 7 (Christchurch to Nelson)
On the way to Nelson we stopped at Kaikoura. This place is a really good place to see marine wildlife. A large number of people on the tour wanted to go swimming with dolphins, but only 3 spaces were available due it being retrsicted by the NZ government and being a really popular activity. In the end I opted for swimming with seals. This was really good fun, and it was amazing how close they would swim to you as long as you didn't do anything silly to scare them off. I got to see a couple of smaller seals playing just beneath me in the water. After the fun in the water was over it was back on the bus and on to Nelson where we would spend the next two nights.

13th Feb, Tour day 8 (Nelson)
It's my birthday so what do I decide to do in the morning, yes I go skydiving, along with about 10 others from the tour. The skydive itself seemed to be over before you knew it, then you had a leasurly 6-7 mins to enjoy the views as you floated down under the parachute. The worst part of the skydive was the 15-20mins it had taken for the plane to climb to the jump height of 13,000ft. This seemed to take forever and of course the nerves were building during that time. I have a DVD of the jump for posterity, but I don't like watching it as I think I look stupid in it. After the skydive I had nothing else planned for the day so I joined a few others on the beach to enjoy the afternoons sunshine. It didn't take that long before we were bored with the beach so we went to the bottle shop and started drinking about 3pm. That eveing we were to have a party at the hotel to celebrate by birthday, the theme of the party was "P". There were some really good efforts from people and almost everyone had a costume of some sort for the party. By about 10pm we moved the party to the local pub to prevent us annoying too many of the hotels other guests. In the pub I eventally managed to complete the birthday task I'd been set of getting 28 kisses as it was my 28th birthday, though it took a bit of work towards the end.....

14th Feb, Tour day 9 (Nelson to Wellington)
It's valentine's day, but there's no valentine for me :( Today we drive to Picton where we get the ferry across the Cook Strait to Wellington. In the evening we had another meal out in a very nice pub. However the pub closed quite early so we had to go back to our hotel and drink our way through the leftover beer from the previous night in order to celebrate Evelyns last night on the tour.

15th Feb, Tour day 10 (Wellington to Rotorua)
It's the day of the bus breakdown. We were supposed to have a chance to stop somewhere to do a bungy on the way to Rotorua, but that got scuppered when the bus broke a fual injector and started pumping diesel all over the road. We had to wait a couple of hours for a replacement coach to turn up and take us to Rotorua. The hotel here had hot tubs on the patio outsde every room, and somehow, despite having one of the room with a small tub, we managed to get 8 of us in our hot tub. We're at this hotel for 2 nights, hurrah. I helped Chris with a (taxi) trip to the local bottle shop to get booze for the whole group as the nearest place to get booze was 20 mins walk from the hotel. The evening was spent drinking beer in various people's hot tubs.

16th Feb, Tour Day 11 (Rotorua)
This morning we had a tour around a Maori thermal village. It was very interesting and informative about the maori culture. We saw a cultural show they put on for the visitors, then had a traditionally cooked Hangi meal for lunch. In the afternoon I went White Water Rafting. The rafting wasn't as good as I was expecting, there was a lot of stopping along the way, and of the hour we spent on the water not that much of it was actually spent going through rapids. We did however go down "the heighest commercially rafted waterfall in the world", a 7m waterfall. That was quite good fun, especially when the guide fell out of the raft in front of us. The evning was spent messing around in the hotel pool then in the hot tubs again.

17th Feb, Tour day 12 (Rotorua to Auckland)
The journey to Auckland involved a stop at Waitomo. There are lots of caves around Waitomo and the stop was long enough to allow us time to go in some. I joined the trip that went into the "Haggis Honking Holes". This trip was one for the adventurous as it started with 3 abseils, the first one dry then the next two down waterfalls within the cave. The whole trip was an excellent laugh, and the two guides we had we nutters in the best possible way, and total monkeys when it came to climbing around the cave. The evening was time for a Big Party, as more than half the people on the tour were only doing the 12 day tour so they were leaving us. The party ended up in the bar at Base Backpacker in Auckland, which is where we were staying. We got back to Base after our meal out just before 10pm, which was lucky because the offer for jugs of beer for $5 ended at 10. Between about 8 of us we bought more than 15 jugs of beer, but that was OK because Kerrie was helping drink them and she "never gets hangovers". At base they were also doing a mechanical surfboard competition that night, of course I wasn't very good at it but some of the others on the tour were, and we had a few prize winners amongst us. Unfortunately we found that most of the 12 day tourers were lightweights and at around 2am we noticed that there were only people on the 15 day tour left in the bar, time for bed, the coach leaves at 8:30am tomorrow.....

18th Feb, Tour Day 13 (Auckland to Bay of Islands)
Those of us doing the 15day tour were joined on the tour today by a new group of tourers, these people were mostly doing the 15 day tour in the opposite direction. Of course we couldn't just sit on the bus and suffer hangovers this morning, so we decided we'd all turn up on the bus in our PJs, and for those blokes without PJs it would be their boxers. Thankfully when I got to breakfast I found that it wasn't just me and Chris who were in our boxers, but most of the others were in their PJs as well, however it was still odd having to walk down the street to the bus in my boxers. The new tourers were all too keen and were already on the bus when we got there, and they didn't really know what to make of all these hungover (Kerrie) nutters. We had a few stops on the way to the Bay of Islands, most of which were used by Kerrie to be sick, she now knows what we mean when we say "I've got a hangover". This evening was quite a quiet one as we had had such a big night out the previous night, but somehow a load of people ended up playing cards in my room until midnight and me and Chris drank our way through most of a bottle of Madeira Wood Matured Glemorangie, so much for not drinking today.....

19th Feb, Tour Day 14 (Bay of Islands)
I went on a sailing trip around the Bay of Islands today. The weather was mostly good so plenty of sunscreen was deployed. About mid morning the boat found a pod of 3 dolphins, and as luck would have it they didn't have any young with them so when the came over to our boat and stopped swimming too fast we were able to get in the sea with them. It was amazing to be swimming just a couple of feet away from them at one point. Unfortunately I'd swam so hard to get near them when I got off the boat that when I dived under to play with them I wasn't able to hold my breath for long enough to really get them interested in playing with me. At about 11:30 we had to leave the dolphins alone to have their lunch, the boat then took us to a deserted beach for an hour, before picking us back up for a BBQ lunch on board. The afternoon was spent relaxing on the boat as it sailed back to port. We had another relatively quiet evening, we only went to the pub till about midnight. Though Wes refused to go to the pub in the drag he'd had on for tea.

20th Feb, Tour Day 15 (Bay of Islands to Auckland)
I took this morning off from the optional activities thinking I'd be able to have a lie in, as the 15 days of hard partying were starting to catch up with me. Unfortunately I still had to be up in ime to have my bag on the bus for 9am. Spent the morning relaxing around the town. Once the bus had us back in Auckland there was time for a quick survivors photo of those of us who'd made it around the 15 day tour, taken by Deane's mum! Then we had to ruch to get ready as we were meeting to go to dinner in only 40mins, and I had to find the hotel I was staying at. I managed to get ready in time to meet the others at Base, then we eventually (after waiting ages for Wes) went for our meal in a waterfront pub. I later found out that this pub was only 2 door away from my hotels back door, but never mind I don't mind rushing to get ready, honest! The plan had been to have a large party night out, but in the end we were all too tired and the party withered away quite early.

21st Feb (Auckland)
Spent the morning with a few of the people from the rour who were flying out that afternoon, we didn't really do much we just kind of hung around the harbour area of Auckland. After we'd waved them off in the airport shuttle me and Alex went to the Sky Tower and signed up to do the Sky Jump. The Sky Jump is described as a "wire controlled BASE jump", basically you jump off a platform outside the observation deck of the Sky Tower at 192m (~630ft) with a wire attached to your harness and fall to the ground. The wire actually controls your fall all the way down to the ground so you don't actually ever freefall doing this, however it does let you fall quite quickly until about 20ft about the ground when you slow down for a gentle landing.

22nd Feb (Auckland to Honolulu)
This was by far the longest day I've ever had. I got up relatively late. Once I'd had breakfast and checked out of my hotel I went for a wonder and got a few pressies for people. After that I went back to the Sky Tower, intending to go up to the observation deck to get some pictures. However when I got there I found myself talking to the people who run the "Vertigo Climb", and ended up signing up to do that at about midday. The vertigo climb takes you up the antenna mast on the top of the Sky Tower and you end up, after climbing up a series of ladders within the mast, on a "crowsnest" (by the orange mark on the antenna mast in this picture) at about 1000ft. The views of the city from here are amazing, but unfortunatly they won't let you take your own camera up there so all the pictures I have are the ones they took of me. After I got down from the tower it to the airport for a flight to Sydney. My luck was in on this flight as I ended up sat next to a nice man who was a Quantas frequent flier, so when we got to Sydney he got me into the Quantas lounge as his guest and I was able to enjoy the free beverages that were available! I didn't have that long in the lounge howevere before it was time for me to go and get my flight to Honolulu. I managed to get some sleep on the flight, which was just as well, because I got there before I left and still had the rest of the day to enjoy. I spent a while looking round then sat by the pool and had an early evening meal before going to bed around 6:30pm, well it had been an over 36 hour day by then....

23rd - 25th Feb (Honolulu)
I really didn't do much for these 3 days, I pretty much just relaxed on the beach or by the pool and enjoyed the views.

26th - 27th Feb (Honolulu to London)
The 25th started badly when I didn't sleep very well overnight, then had to catch the shuttle bus to the airport at 5:30am. Got some sleep on the flight to LA. The flight from LA to London was where I was intending to do most of my sleeping but that proved to be impossible when I ended up with the passgenger from hell sat next to me. The Guy was big, fat, sweaty, smelt aweful, and didn't stop fidgeting and being noisy until he fell asleep, which was after the seatbelt sign had gone on for landing.....

28th Feb
Well I'm back from holiday, and have now caught up on some sleep. However my bag is still on a free holiday mystery extension couresy of Ameriacn Airlines & British Airways

1st March
Woke up at 4am as my body had no idea what timezone I was in. Spnet my first day back at work like a zombie. On the plus side BA think they've found my bag, unfortunately someone at BA can't type so it looks like they may have tried to deliver it somewhere else.

2nd March
Well my body clock is still miles out so woke up at 5:30am. The good news is that BA managed to return my bag to me in the afternoon, so I guess that's the end of the holiday now.....

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