"Sit on my knee while I tighten your straps"

Unfortunately that sentence was said to me by a burly New Zealand guy who was about to leap out a plane with me attached to him. It had the advantage that I was seriously distracted from the fact that I was 15000ft up in a crop-duster with an open door. Anna didn't have this problem. She rather liked her close companion!

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. We woke in our lovely lodge in Queenstown, didn't have a shower with the non-existent towels and then headed down for breakfast. Breakfast was a cup of hot water and a tea bag to share. We chatted with two American guys on holiday. Anna enthused about our upcoming sky-diving. They said that their uncle had become paralysed in a flying accident and they were going horse riding. Outside I gave a sigh of relief. It was cloudy. I enjoyed a croissant and going into the sky-diving centre to be told that "the first flight was cancelled because of bad weather and come back in an hour to see about the next flight". Anna was optimistic. We went and had another breakfast and planned to drive to the West Coast if the jump was off. We didn't know whether we had enough time to get across to the West, but thought that we should give it a go. Then we were told that the jump was cancelled!

In a happy frame of mind, we (actually Anna wasn't totally happy about this, but she was plotting a cunning plan) drove off towards Wanaka. We stopped at the highest point and then went on a wonderful hike. This, for both of us, was the highlight of the trip. We went up and up and up. We passed the snow line. It got cold. It started snowing. We kept going up. It got icy. I'm not going to post the movie of me slowly slipping down the mountain with my legs going into overdrive trying to propel me forward! Anna thinks it's funny.

Anna made a snowman (actually a little mound of snow).

We kept going up. It was steep. We ended up knee-deep in snow. Anna decided that it would be easier if she ate the snow! We then sat at the top looking at another huge peak that loomed above us. It would have been incredible to continue, but we really weren't prepared enough for that climb! And so ... we turned around for the descent. We went down a lot faster than our trip up! We slid down. This got rather exciting when we went over a ledge and ended up in free-fall for a while (don't worry mum we were being sensible about avalanches etc.!)

Then we continued our drive to Wanaka. What a beautiful place! I highly recommend that anyone travelling in that area should go through Wanaka. It has a spectacular lake surrounded by high mountains. Unfortunately it also has another sky-diving centre. Anna had phoned ahead and had already booked us on a 2pm flight.

There was a cloud layer - I felt confident that the jump would be cancelled. We had lunch. We drove to the airport. They told us that all was good - we'd jump through the cloud layer!

I got nervous. We watched a DVD. Apparently all you need to do when skydiving is to put your legs in a bent position between your instructor's legs. This didn't sound good. We got into our flying suits. There were four of us. An English guy and a German were planning to jump out at 12000ft leaving Anna, myself and our instructors to climb another 3000ft. The flight up was great. We had amazing views of the lakes (between the breaks in the cloud) and of the mountains (including Mt Cook in the distance).

Then the door opened.

Then the German guy and his instructor disappeared. They simply fell out. Then the English guy fell out. Then the door shut and we went higher. I was told that it might be a bit cold at 15000ft (by the way this represents 4.5km up). I kept thinking of the form that I'd signed "gas may be trapped in your body", "you may suffer from lack of oxygen", "you may die". Anna was discussing how many back-flips they could do before opening the parachute and whether she could go out the plane head-first.

Then the door opened.

Then I fell out. Then I was upside down. Then I was at terminal velocity. What a feeling!! There's no way to describe it, but I can still feel it! I went through a break in the clouds ... Anna went straight through a cloud. The views were phenomenal. We kept falling. The parachute opened after 60 seconds of free-fall and then we were gliding down. I waved at Anna, but she was too busy taking control of her parachute and doing dangerous stunts! Oh, it was good! Then we landed (after about 10 or so minutes of flying around). Wow! Anna and I have already checked out the sky-diving centres in Sydney!

Anna bought me a coffee in a plastic cup from the nearest petrol station.

We then set off driving for the West Coast. We were aiming at Haast and the map made it look quite a straight-forward drive. It ended up being my favourite drive on our trip! We drove past the beautiful Lake Hawea and into the huge mountains. We were driving through the Mount Aspiring National Park which is New Zealand's third largest national park and also has World Heritage status. I'm not going to try and describe the scenery - my book says that "the scenery ranges from snow- and glacier-clad mountains to rugged rock faces, spectacular forested valleys and picturesque river flats." The road was windy. It was also icy. There were big drops! At one point we were overtaken by an ambulance, and then a fire engine and then a heap more ambulances all rushing ahead of us. We found out later that a bus had skidded off the road, but luckily nobody was killed. I was driving very slowly. It got dark. We stopped at the Gates of Haast to see the huge gorge with a violent river flowing through it. It got darker. Anna fell asleep.

We found a nice hotel in Haast (that provided towels), had a much-needed fish-and-chips and then fell asleep.