Staying Off Dry Land

The weather has generally been pretty good down here, but that hasn't kept me dry. On my last day in Queenstown I went river surfing. Basically that means you get a modified boogie board and jump into a river and go down through rapids on it. Its very cool and lots of fun, but is quite tiring when you start. Nearly everyone got cramp in their legs on the first run (though that may be partially due to dehydration from the previous night's drinking) and my shoulder ached from quite early on. It was easier on the second run as you realised you didn't have to paddle so much and the rapids were more fun. They were grade 2 and 3 rapids, which would be pretty tame for white-water rafting, but plenty for me on my board.
Just to keep the adrenalin going I went rafting a couple of days later in Rangitata which has some grade 5 rapids which is the highest grade you can commercially raft. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but was still a good laugh and since we hadn't capsized we deliberately did at the end of the run.
Then I headed to Christchurch. On the way we stopped at some really cool lakes which are very icy blue coloured cos of the sediment in them called Lake Pukaki (which I think is the one in the picture) and Lake Tekapo.
In Christchurch I went to the International Antarctic Centre which is based next to the New Zealand, USA and Italy Antarctic HQs. Apparently Christchurch is the gateway to Antartica and about 70% of all people going to there leave from here. You got to ride in a vehicle called a Hagland that they use there which is great at going over crevices and floats in water, so we went over a fake crevice and floated in some water. They also have some penguins that have been rescued and lots of stuff on living in the Antarctic. They do a recreation of a snow storm, but there's not much snow, just a lot of wind, still it was fun to do.