Crossing the North-South Divide....

For those of you who don't know NZ at all, it is made up of two Islands (North and South respectivly). The North Island (where we have been so far) has a 3/4s of the 4 million population even though it is the smaller island, leaving the South Island hardly scathed by a small human pressence of only 1 million people with a population density of only about 7 people per sq KM. Being into my geography this amazed me quite a bit, I mean when you think about it NZ and the UK are roughly the same size in land mass and yet there are twice as many people in London alone than there are in the whole of New Zealand. When you start to look at that in terms of the whole country, 70 million to 4 million it is a huge difference! And we are not exactly high up in terms of population when you look at china and india (1.3 billion and 1.1 billion respectivly). Anyway my geography ranting aside back to NZ.....The two Islands are divide by what is known as the "Cook Straight" - the stretch of water between them, it is well known for having some rough weather and being a very dynamically dangerous place to sail across. However the large ocean liner of a ship that we were boarding didn't look like it would have much problems and from where we were standing it look like the waters where carm.

We couldn't have been much more wrong! Once we got out of the shelter of the bay and into the strait the skys blackend and the sea began to demonstrate what a fuss it can kick up when it wants to. There were some seriously high waves! I am talking double my height, and strong enough to through this huge chunk of steel we were floating in side to side. It went from a huge Ocean liner to tin can! Me and Jak managed to aviod being sea sick whilst playing cards but a trip to the toilet quickly asured me that at least one person didn't! Not nice.

After a few hours of swaying we soon hit the shelter of the south Islands, we were nearing Picton and apon hear the cries of a few kids yelling dolphins, we shot up and became little kids ourselves. Rushing to the bow of the ship, we saw them majestically diving out of the water along side the boat. It was amazing but unfortunatly it was almost impossible to catch them on camara, but I have done a little sketch to demonstrate what it looked like....

I did not actually draw this picture and it is probably copy righted so any legal action that proceeds this post should be directed towards Jak Modena of the UK!

Well me being an idiot to one side, it really was amazing and just arriving on the south island proved to be quite a beautiful experience in itself. It was a very short coach journey to the hostel we were staying at that night (the coach driver was kind enough to drop us outside, Hail to the NZ Bus Driver!!). We had picked Atlantis to stay, not the hidden city but the hostel in picton (http://www.atlantishostel.co.nz/index.html - the website if you are interested). It was ok there, we wasted a few coins on some arcade driving game and the pool table before we decided to shop for some food. Because we had a lot of flour and eggs left from all the pancakes we had been making, we decided to make toad in the hole. After buying all of the ingreediants and then walking past a chip shop we also decided to get fish and chips for tea and cook that the next day! It was nothing in comparison to the British Fish and Chips but hey ho, at least we didn't have to cook. We didn't really do a lot other than sleep from then on so I will call it a day until next time!

Much love

Joe

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Quote - "The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing" If any of you get this without cheating then I will be shocked!

Caption comp -

Joe decided to go for the wind swept look for his ocean voyage.