The world through the eyes of a Blightonian

If you to learn just one thing from travelling around the globe it would have to be that, without question that the Brits are 'the' only nation in the world that actually have manners. It's hard not to be bitter about this but it's just, well...true. Take this for an example, Pete and I have just walked 18km up and over a hill to find that we were among the front runners to finish our mamouth journey. Quite a normal feat for young strapping lads like ourselves, ahem...all the same we formed an ordelry queue to get on our bus home. Brilliant.

Well in theory yes but of course we were about to encounter the World market and in essence every self important German, demanding Frenchie and 'I'm number one cause I'm from the greatest land on earth but I didn't even get off the bus in the first place because if I actually left the comfort of sitting down I might be subject to a terroist attack' American. And as if you couldn't guess this already, 5 minutes of pushing shooving and apolgies (from Pete and I only for some strange reason) we eventually got on the bus thus prooving eother that the british theory of waiting in line works or that our European and American neighbours are starting to respect our merry little island, hmmm.

Anyways, it acutally turns out that the Kiwi's are quite found of us Brit's so armed with this wonderful fact we thought that the best way to handle our impolite friends was to hold our stiff upper lip, have a cup of tea and put our best foot forward. And then after we were done with all the english cliches we could possbily think of we decided to jump out of a plane.

Ok, so we were strapped to an insutructor who was also strapped to a chute but the feeling of falling out of a plane is just, well, indescribable but I'm going to try anyway as I'm meant to have a degree in the art of wordsmithery and well, if I don't my blog's going to get rather short this week.

Now, I'm sure that wou've all had a dream when you fast asleep and for some reason you suddenly think you are abaout to fall and you wake yourself up to find half your body hoving on the edge of the bed and the rest of you desperatly clambering to the bedsheets in a bit to save yourself. Well the feeling of falling out of a plane is something like that, one minute you're sitting down and the next you're travelling at +200km/h and your fighting to keep your mouth closed and looking like one of those hounds which insist on sticking their head out of the window on the motorway leaving a trail of salavia on the read window.

On our jump we had a 45 second free fall, which I suppose seems long enough because hey, do you really want to be falling for much longer than that without a parachute. Infact just while we are on that note, the world record for a parachute jump stands at 103,800ft with a 5 minute free fall, I wonder what 103,801ft would feel like...? Back to the point, again the free fall is much like a dream because by the time you realise you are actually falling you manage to stop yourself and you are either back in bed, but in my case floating aimlessly back to earth with a giant piece of silk strapped to my back. I worked out that my daredevil expereince cost me nearly 30 quid a minute, some may say expensive, I would say worth every penny. I hear that they do it for cheaper in Argentina as well!

Without trying to make everyone reading this blog to fell like they want to kill me from jealously I really do have to say that this place is bloody fantastic. The scenary really is just something else, the people our friendlier than Santa Claus' smile (I mean we went to the comedy club in Wellinton the other night, the compiere couldn't even take the piss out of the English, come on the English, how can you not rip us?!), and the food out here, sublime.

I can't really explain why this humble country is so great. Maybe it has something to do with every Kiwi having the pick of around 10 sheep per person but they really do have it right.

We're off to Queenstown tomorrow in our pretty blingin' pimpin hire car. They're complaing out here at the moment having to pay 70p/litre, you see they even have a sense of humour out here! Best go now and try and sleep off my 5th ice cream in 5 days, they really are too hard to resist but I not only tackled the beast of a hill I told you about eariler but I went hiking on a glacier today. Infact it was fox's glacier, as in well...see for yourself. I thought it was kinda cool to be able to eat the famous mints whilst hiking through

death defying crevicies. I do make this trip sound rather dangerous don't I!

Keep it real friends,

And don't forget to keep on the board timwaggtravel!

Me

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