Hi All

Thanks for the millions of emails received from our friends and family after my last appeal to let us know how you doing. Those few that have not should feel ashamed of yourselves!

So we spent the morning in the Wellington museum as mentioned it was fab, but just not enough time. Under the museum they have an Earthquake interrupting machine….basically the whole building is built with a hollow foundation, this is filled with what looks like recycled car tyres, as the earth moves the building slides on the rubber thereby stopping the building from crumbling. Really interesting, but probably not needed where most of friends live.

We then caught the 3 hour ferry to the South island. The sea was moderate, but the 4 of us for the 1^st time felt sea sick, so we have sailed all that way on our boat and then feel ill on a poxy ferry! Vic says it was because I was not at the helm and perhaps I should go to the bridge and give the captain a few pointers! The trip however was stunning, huge mountains rising straight out of the sea, some snow-capped. Deep fjords cutting into the land similar to Norway.

After the ferry we were in the middle of the wine lands. NZ has some fantastic wines(mainly white with a few light reds) So we decided to visit a few of them and ignore the alcohol driving limit for a day. First we went to Cloudy Bay, probably the best know NZ wines. The setting was great, while Vicki and I had a tasting session the kids played croquet. We had some piece while trying a novel idea of Tapas and wine. They select a few wines and add a Tapas dish to each, they got it right and the wine food mixture was perfect. The other patrons however had to contend with Callum and jess running around and firing hard balls with wooden mallets….I don’t think I heard the phrase we hear so often “What gorgeous kids you have”

Below our attempt to sedate the kids

Heading from the wine lands towards the glaciers, we (on Andrews request) picked up some hitch hikers….man this type of tourist is tough….6 hours in the back of the van with 2 kids and 1 night at a camp site and we still could not get rid of them (that’s the hikers not the kids) We stopped at the longest swing bridge, walked across (ok staggered while Cal and I tried to get the bridge to swing and bounce wildly) and then walked through a display of all the gold mining they did in this area.

From here we went to Frans Joseph  glacier to do some glacier walking. We had to lie about ages, beg and plead and eventually they allowed us to take the kids up on the glacier for a half day excursion.

The picture below shows us all kitted out with crampons and ice picks.

Climbing up the start of the glacier

The next picture shows the smallest boot they had, which Jess had to wear…..hence the age issues!

The glacier was filled with caves, crevices etc and was quite spectacular to walk on…the kids well they were their usual competent/confident explorers and the guide commented on how very few adults could keep the pace and energy they set.

Cal and me looking down on us through a chimney

Vicki in a crevice

A tight squeeze in some areas

After 3 hours and still going strong