Keeping up with the Joneses

Us Joneses take some beating when it comes to the competition of How Many Things Can You Fit Into 10 Days In New Zealand? I took a bus down to the brilliantly named Twizel last Wednesday to meet them and my usually laid back (aka tight-arsed) travelling style immediately upped several gears to a pace at which it has stayed until now, at which point we've finally arrived back in Christchurch. On Wednesday we took a chopper light over Mount Cook, on Thursday we went bungy jumping near Queenstown, on Friday Anna and Rich went diving in Milford Sound (while we wheezy buggers stayed on the boat), on Saturday and Sunday we did an overnight tramp, on Monday we took a jetboat ride near Queenstown and yesterday and today we travelled back up to Christchurch, via the West Coast of all routes. In attempt to preserve the life of this computer I will therefore just concentrate on the flight over Mount Cook here.

The helicopter flight was fantastic. A helicopter can do many things that a plane can't, namely get you right up close to the mountains by flying alongside the ridges and right over the passes, and land on glaciers! Our pilot Phil flew us north out of Twizel, close over the foothills and turquoise lakes, and right up to the south face of Mount Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand.









Once we'd flown over the glaciers surrounding Mount Cook Phil took us to a snowfield at the top of a glacier. The snow was virgin and we all rejoiced in stealing her beautiful flower by running around and frolicking and loving the fact that no one had been up there in many days.





Now I'm tired and I'm going to leave it there because I'm a hungry hungry hippo!