It’s a Friday night, I’m in a hostel with an awesome bar, good music and lots of people and yet I find myself sitting on Facebook. Why you ask? Partly because I can no longer afford to go drinking, but mainly because of my lack of sleep last night. When I first came away, I couldn’t sleep for a week or two as I was not used to having a room full of people (many of whom have serious snoring issues), who all come in at different times during the night. However, you soon get used to the noise of people both in and out of your room, noise from the streets and music from the bar. Thanks to this, I can now sleep on buses, trains, coaches, cars, planes and boats, in dorms with 12 people, in  rooms located next door to clubs and in beds which creak and squeak everytime someone moves. One thing, however, which is difficult to ignore, is when two of your roomies decide to have a bit of fun in the night, clearly a bit starved of action. Waking up to questionnable noises and a bed rocking way more than is acceptable is one of the moments you dread. Speak to most travellers and they will have had an experience of a similar kind. But what can you do? Too sleepy to think about climbing out of bed and sitting outside the room, unsure if anyone else is awake so not wanting to turn on the light and have a good old laugh, you merely have to sit it out, ears covered with an ipod and pillow and hoping to God it’s all over as quickly as it begun. In this case, thankfully, it was. Once one of the pair had left the room and the female offender was snoozing (and snoring…loudly) I braved sitting up in my bed hoping I wasn’t alone in my horror. I wasn’t. The eight other people in the dorm all trying to sleep had been roused by the same noises as I and luckily, we were able to have a serious giggle about it at 4am…so much so that by the time offender no.1 returned, we were in hysterics and I was actually crying with laughter. Clearly embarassed, the guy slunk back into bed with Ms. Snores-a-lot, and after making sure there was an appropriate distance between the pair, the rest of us fell back into a restless slumber. Although the pair tried to be quieter in the morning, when one of my roomies went to get up as she had early morning errands to run, she was horrified to find two naked people up to no good. Not surprisingly, she didn’t even bother to change into clean clothes before swiftly departing the room. A walk into town in her PJs was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make…

On a lighter note, yesterday I went swimming with wild Hector dolphins. This was a fantastic experience especially as three of us hired a car for the day in order to see some sights on the way. The friend driving the slightly shoddy veichle had done a lot of driving in NZ already so all was well, no problems with funny roads and traffic lights…However, there was a slight blip when, getting into the car, she remarked, ‘Oh, it’s an automatic.’ Questionning what she meant, she responded, ‘Well, the last time I drove an automatic was in Australia. I hit a kangaroo and wrote off the car.’ Right-o.

Back to safer ground and we found out the dolphins are the smallest and rarest in the world, with only about 7,500 left swimming the oceans. They are found mainly around New Zealand so it seemed an opportunity not to be missed. As with the surfing in Australia when it rained all day, the weather was dreadful and along with the rain came freezing winds and even colder water. Bobbing about in the ice cold ocean for just under an hour was not something I was anticipating on doing, but the dolphins made it all worthwhile. By tapping stones together and making noises under the water, the dolphins are drawn to you and are keen to play. By the end we had masses around us, jumping in the waves and circling us, trying to play games. It really was incredible.

Other than the swim, I’ve had a fairly tame time. After departing Queenstown, I headed to the southern most part of New Zealand, where I visited beaches, waterfalls, pubs and clubs and finally Milford Sound, the fiordland, which was absolutely stunning. After a long coach jouney we arrived at a ferry terminal where we took a two hour long boat cruise through the mountains and falls and were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny day. Great opportunity to take hundreds of photos which inevitably all end up looking identical.

After this I went back to a town called Wanaka, which again, is a stunning place. A big skiing area, this town is heaving in the winter, but pleasantly calm during the summer months. It gave me a good chance to wind down after travelling non stop on buses and is definitely a place I’ve mentally noted to come back to.

Following this I headed back to Queenstown and then up to Christchurch, where I now find myself. Despite being warned that there was little to do in this city, I’ve had a very pleasant time sitting outside Starbucks in Cathedral Square, doing a good amount of people watching. The weather hasn’t improved over the last few days but thankfully I bought myself a new jumper as wearing the same one day after day resulted in it starting to smell like dog. I’m nothing if not a true lady.

Tomorrow I’m off on the road again, heading back up north to do some wine tours (something which has encouraged more than one friend to say I’m turning into my parents) and then back to the North Island to see what havoc I can wreak there.

Fingers crossed the beds up there will stay firmly still.

I’m struggling to keep my eyes open while writing this entry, thanks to both my noisy noisy dorm mates getting up at stupid o’clock and the fact that I too needed to get out of bed when they did in order to do my laundry. Today is one of those catch up days where I spend far too long on the internet, wash, dry and neatly pack my clothes (a pointless task as they always end up heavily creased) and generally have a clear out of all the utter rubbish that has accumalated in my bag over the past few weeks.

The jeans I’m now wearing are far more snug than I’d usually like due to the fact that, impatient to wear some warm clothes this morning as all I had left clean were a pair of short shorts, I put my jeans in the dryer. BIG mistake – they are now 2 sizes smaller than before. Incentive to lose weight? I think so.

I think though, that thanks to yesterday’s antics, weight loss is surely on the way. Doing two bungy jumps in the space of 5 hours was more nerves, excitement and adrenaline than my body could take. Having booked my Nevis bungy jump (the highest bungy at 134m) a few days ago, I had a painful 72 hours of waiting for the fateful moment when some nice stranger would tell me to jump off a ledge. Fortunately, 4 friends of mine were also signed up for the bungy so we were there to egg each other on. Having managed to force down some Cheerios first thing in the morning, I felt a little optimistic before we left, but as we approached the jump site and I suddenly found myself in a rickety cable car being taken to the ledge itself, all optimism flew out the window and I  became a quivering wreck who couldn’t not stop laughing (in a hysterical, nervous way of course). Nerves didn’t get any better when I found myself in a chair being strapped up by the ankles and the whole ‘what the bloody hell am I doing?!’ factor set in as a friendly fellow starting telling me to ‘just shuffle forward’ onto the platform. Just shuffle forward?! Convinced he was trying to trick me into jumping without realising, I glanced a look down. Yes I was still on the platform, no I did not like what I saw. Bugger.

However, stalling at this bungy is really not an option. If you don’t go after the countdown I can’t imagine you ever will. So, when the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 came, I jumped….and good lord was it high. I screamed as I flew off until sound seemed to evade me and I found no noise was coming out of my mouth. After that though the feeling was incredible. There was some panic when I couldn’t pull my cord that was meant to sit me in the upright position, forcing me to go back up to the top upside down. There is something not quite right about looking at mountains upside down and I must admit that when I got back to the top I made a mad scramble to hold onto anything I could. However, despite shaking like crazy, I was on the biggest high and found the whole experience absolutely incredible.

So, a bit happy from this jump, I decided to go ahead and do another. The next one was only 47m high but is based up a gondola 400m above Queenstown…so the drop seems a bit mental too. This one had a harness around your waist which meant that you could do a running jump off of the ledge. Although I wasn’t scared about this one, at the moment when I was about to run there was a sudden panic and I seriously questionned once again what I was doing. Too late to back out though so I took a running jump and even managed to get in a flip. Very very fun.

After these jumps I was on a huge high which, inevitably, resulted in the mother of all lows. By midnight I was absolutely shattered and more than ready for bed. I may have missed some of the party spirit but I’d take the adrenaline high over the alcohol one any day.

Now it seems, I’ve done most things on my ‘must do’ list. After Wellington, we headed down to the south island on a stunning ferry ride that unfortunately, I slept through. I had a fantastic time in Nelson where we went to the Abel Tasman National Park which was beautiful and where I was lucky enough to see baby seals and penguins on the beach. I can’t help but question why I keep partaking in walks when most of the time it’s all up hill and I curse under my breath, promising myself never to do them again. New Zealand is lucky it’s so pretty because I’d never give these parks my money to walk unless they were really something special. Turns out, they all are…great for the parks, a bugger for my budget.

Heading down from Nelson we stopped in a small town called Westport where I participated in jet boating; literally a jet boat , an insane driver, lots of 360′ turns and getting incredibly wet. Following this was a stop at a lake in the middle of nowhere with only a pub to keep it company. This place is called the ‘Poo Pub’ and is home to a very wild, very druken night. The bus uses it as a fancy dress base where they pick a theme for all us backpackers. Our theme was ‘rubbish’ for the girls and ‘cross dressing’ for the boys. The guys got far too enthuasiatic for their own good, having a great time in a thrift store deciding which bras would fit them best. Worrying…

Our theme was far easier as a roll of black bin bags was all that was needed. A quck cut here and tie there and I fashioned a bin bag dress, backcombed all my hair and covered my arms and legs in black powder. Trashy enough? I think so…

Obviously this night was never meant to be done sober so hangovers were rife on our bus the following morning. Not a pretty sight.

We moved on to Franz Josef next, home to a giant glacier that most of us did a full day hike up and down. This too was brilliant and beautiful (noticing a NZ trend here?) and despite the severe aching and general loss of breath (another clear sign of my level of fitness) it was an unforgettable day out.

Now I’m just about ready to start having some chill out, and hopefully cheap, time again. Moving on again tomorrow to the very south of the island. I’ve already been offered several walks and what more, I’m actually considering a few of them. If I don’t come back fit as a fiddle I’m going to be having words…