Queenstown

We've now arrived in the extreme sports capital of New Zealand, itself the extreme sports capital of the world, where all those with a death wish can hurtle, plummet or leap to their heart's content. As we are now extremely brassic (and I have no interest whatsoever in doing anything "extreme") we have confined our activities so far to heading up Queenstown hill in a gondola, shopping and maybe a little bit of hiking. The most extreme thing that has happened here so far in fact was Andy getting his little finger caught in the van door two nights ago (right on the nail - ow!). He was doing an admirable job of not swearing - in the words of our next door neighbour he "damn near jumped over the gazebo"! You will be heartened to hear that I kept a cool head in the crisis, obtaining torch, loo roll, savlon and a plaster and instructing Andy to hold his finger under the cold tap ( I was secretly quite excited to be using the first aid kit for a proper emergency and not just my endless mossie bites). Anyway the next day he was recovered enough (except for an odd need to go to the loo every five seconds, attributed by Andy to "shock") to head up the gondola, where the view from the top of the gondola was lovely. More entertaining were the efforts of the gondola staff to make it seem like an extreme sport for oldies, even offering to take your picture as you sat in the plexiglass bubble - ooh the excitement! At the top we had a drink and did a bit of souvenir shopping, including the purchase of our new travelling companion, who will be sitting on the dashboard and reading the map for the rest of our trip. He's a little hot now in his snazzy fleece hat and scarf, but I think he looks very cute. After all that excitement we decided on something a little more sedate, and went to see a real life Kiwi in the Kiwi and Bird Sanctuary. They are very odd things - their feathers are more like hair, they have nostrils on the end of their long beaks and marrow in their strong leg bones. Apparently they share more characteristics with mammals than they do with birds. Something that will make the ladies wince (and maybe the men!); the size of their eggs relative to their body mass is the equivalent of a human giving birth to a 3 or 4 year old... More weird fauna from Oceania! If it was Aussie, it would have giant fangs and claws tipped with poison, so I suppose we should be thankful...! We also saw various other birds of the small, large, green, brown and ducklike type (sorry Kes!) - as you can see we have a few years to go until we are fully fledged twitchers... More interesting was the Maori cultural show, where we saw a traditional haka being performed and were even coaxed into "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" Maori style! We rounded the day off with dinner and drinks with a friend of mine, Gemma who (and she won't mind me saying this!) is even more of a bum than me. She is managing a hostel over here now, preparing for yet another adventure next year when her and her boyfriend Ben will be sailing a 26 foot sloop around the South Pacific for 5 and a half months. Better watch those sharks! Ben is obviously completely mental and sailed this boat to New Zealand all the way from Mexico - much of it on his own. Enjoy guys, send us a postcard!