Things to do before you die

Dub Dub Dub Internet Café, Christchurch

After dinner that evening we went to the casino in Queenstown where my second bet on the roulette spin came up trumps (twelve) and in my excitement I took my winnings off the table before it was allowed, leading to a frightening level of consternation and condescension from the croupier and his manager who was immediately called out to interrogate me on how I could have forgotten this basic rule of casinos. I offered the best I could do at the time - "I just forgot" - collected my winnings and departed $70 richer but feeling rather poorer in stature and with a growing feeling that, after the 111kg episode, New Zealand was having more fun than I was at my expense.

The next day, keen to do at least something exhilerating with our days in the adventure capital of the world, we steamed back into the information office ready to go paragliding, having carefully read all small print for relevant weight restrictions which were thankfully sufficiently liberal. I had the cash in my hand ready to hand over as the lady phoned the office to make the booking only to hear her repeat the words "wind blowing in the wrong direction" and immediately understand that me and extreme sports are a marriage made in hell and the universe is clearly conspiring to keep us apart for both our sakes. This suspicion was confirmed when we next took the gondola ride to the top of the mountain and did a thing they call a 'luge' ride, except instead of sliding down on your stomach you sit on it like a go kart. Unbeknown to me, they are not designed for people of 6'2" in height (on the contrary, this is an activity clearly designed for kids, but since we weren't allowed to do anything grown-up it seemed worth trying) and my scrunched-up legs prevented the brakes working properly until I let them dangle rather ridiculously out of the sides in a less-than-streamline fashion which prevented any great velocity being achieved. Obscenely fat and freakishly tall - what a lucky lady Tweedie is.

The day after this we left Queenstown, a town I feel I liked more than it liked me, and headed north and inland to Mount Cook, where we did a walk through the snow almost up to the foot of the mountain - the tallest in Australasia - before deeming it too cold and too icy to be worth the effort in our less-than-thermal running shoes/converse. In the afternoon we went on to Tekapo, the drive to which along Lake Pukaki and then Lake Tekapo itself was the most spectacular hour of scenery I have seen in my life. The view from top to bottom went something like - blue sky, heavy snow-topped peak, low-lying cloud, mountain-side lightly dusted with snow, valley village, crystal-blue lake, grass, shoes - all of which looked better than it sounds when I read this back.

Anyway, we arrived in Tekapo where we spent the next two nights in a park overlooking the lake. During this time we walked to the top of the very steep Mount John (an hour up and 20 minutes down, although the latter was more precarious in the snow and ice) and elsewhere inspected what was sold to us at the local information centre as "one of the most photographed spots in New Zealand" which turned out to be a statue of a border collie next to a "historic" (1930s - Kiwis have a similarly limited sense of the scope of history to the Australians) church. Even in static form the dog was a little frightening.

From there to a town called Geraldine to visit a wool shop which boasted both a giant knitted jersey on the wall (it was indeed giant) and a recreation of the Bayeux Tapestry made out of painted bits of old sewing machine. As we stared in bemusement at this bizarre creation a woman in a Christmas-cracker cardigan appeared at our shoulder to announce "it took my husband (also wearing an absurd jumper - not a good advertisement for their product) 25 years to complete". Every fibre in my body wanted to ask "why?" but diplomacy and the thought of an irate woman wielding a knitting needle prevented me.

After this brief and somewhat surreal interval we proceeded north and east, all the way to the coast in fact, arriving at Akaroa on the Banks Peninsular on Wednesday afternoon. The highlight of our two nights here, in fact the only thing of real note we did, was swimming with dolphins yesterday. After donning an enormous dry suit over normal clothes and a 20-minute catamaran ride out into the Pacific we sighted some dolphins and were basically told to jump in. Tweedie didn't particularly enjoy the choppiness of the ocean waves, and opted to climb back aboard ship after half an hour or so, just before a pair of dolphins swam just a couple of metres past me which was very cool. Seeing the big blubbery mammal up close and personal was a bit of a shock, but the dolphins seemed to adjust relatively quickly.

This morning we drove from Akaroa back inland a touch to Christchurch, our final destination. We will spend the next four nights here, partly because we slightly misjudged the length of our trip at other stages, and partly because we are both keen to come home and being here, close to the airport from which we will depart on Tuesday, feels like a step closer to leaving. I should stress that this doesn't mean we're having a terrible time, rather that we are looking forward to returning to home comforts and the company of friends and family. Something like that anyway.

The end is nigh, but not quite yet. I'll do one more post from New Zealand, and then hopefully one more back in Blighty, depending on whether I can stay awake long enough after landing to write it.

Over.