I stayed in Nelson for two days to spend a day kayaking in Abel Tasman, which was beautiful. The day before, I got in touch with Jared Grippe - an old friend from Burbank who is also traveling through New Zealand. We went kayaking together the next day.

(these aren’t my photos, I still have yet to upload my own photos, but it looked just like this!)

Stopped in Greymouth to spend the night in one of the most boring places I’ve ever been. Not much else to say.

I stopped in Franz Josef to climb up the glacier. Perfect day. Took lots of photos. Will upload them soon. Here are someone else’s.

I’m now in Queenstown. In 30 minutes I will jump off of a gondola to do a 130+ meter bungee jump, photos below. Its the second third highest in the world (highest in NZ). Wish me luck.

Update:
I jumped, and it was fantastic.

Update II:
I reconnected with Jared and the Swedish danger-duo: Jenny & Malin in QT…

Even though I had tons of fun there, Queenstown is not my favorite city. Its a small yet expensive, ultra-touristy place. Several times I heard comments about how much it’s changed in the last 5 years - I can see how it used to be quite a nice town. I ended up having a really good time, though, because of the people I met up with.

I arrived a day before Jared, so I went and did the Nevis bungee jump alone (see above). When Jared got in the next day, Lucy and I met up with him to do the luge-thingies up on the hill (I rode them before in Rotorua also) - great fun. We all went out drinking later on with a posse of hostel friends which was also great fun.

The next day Jared and I did the canyon swing - a giant 106 meter swing above a canyon. I thought it was more fun than the bungee jumps because of how much the staff messed with us. They played up the scariness and kept us on our toes. The day before, someone at the hostel had told us that the second jump is free is you go naked - a detail that the staff had left out because our group was all male. Jared and I badgered them until they agreed to let us go on two conditions: 1) We put on our own harnesses so they didnt have to touch is and 2) We convince two girls to jump naked. We jumped, of course. The danger-duo rolled in later and there was another late night of drinking on the town. I had to leave the next morning due to my whirlwind schedule - I would have stayed longer otherwise.

I’ve just left Christchurch… I’ll be going back and copying my written journal back into the previous entries and posting photos soon, I swear it! Just updating the map for now. On my way to the Cook Islands at the moment.

This location for this post is on a beach in Rarotonga.

I had a visit with my parents for two days (so short, I know) on the island of Rarotonga. We did a lot of snorkeling, ate good food and caught up with eachother. The whole time I was there it was rainy and overcast, but still hot so it wasn’t bad at all. I’ll definitely be returning to the Cook Islands some day.