So our big exciting, diving on our own day arrived and we headed up the road from our campsite in Nelson (where the bloke had owned and run said site since 1976 and although he wanted to sell as a going concern now he couldn't due to rising property prices, when I suggested he sell the land (it must be worth a bit as it's near the town centre) he said he couldn't as he'd had such a personal involvement with the place and it was like his baby....I felt a bit sorry for him to be honest) to Motueka where at Sportsworld we hired our dive gear for the day. The nice lady that served us gave us a weight belt with a whopping 30 lbs (14 kgs ish) of weight on it, we won't need all that we figured as we normally dive on about 5-6 kgs we would be less buoyant due to freshwater but more so due to thicker wetsuit...oh how spectacularly wrong can you be....?

The first thing about Pupu Springs is the distance it is from the car park, with dive gear, it the sun. It's 10 minutes but whilst waddling with all said gear it seems to take alot longer. By the time we arrived we were so knackered we had to take some kit off and have a break. The 7mm suits did the trick though as when we enetered the water you couldn't feel how cold it was. But we couldn't sink. As the bag was too heavy as it was we didn't take any extra weight to the springs from the van so thus we just kind of floated on the sruface. Hell it was only 4m deep so it wasn't too bad. I had just enough weight to duck-dive down for some rocks which we thought would weight us down a little more, unfortunatley we only realised after getting out that they were pummice-stone and thus did not help us sink at all as they weighed about a kilo between them. The springs itself though is quite inredible, so clear so you can see as far as is possible, no murkiness (a little to be fair after we got a bit tangled in some weeds - the currents were stupidly strong) and a great experience. We were a little disappointed about the lack of wildlife but hey it'd be like fishing in a goldfish bowl for the lazy fisherman so I guess most of the fish have gone that way...we did see an eel, a couple of fish and a fresh water lobster thingy though.

On the way back to the van we decided to do the 'drift' dive in fish creek. Now on most drift dives we have done you kind of loat along in a very weak current taking about an hour to do a couple of hundred metres. Not fish creek - oh no! What happened next was both exhilerating and incredibly frightening. We zoomed along over rocks in water about 30-40 cm deep before emerging in a 3m deep pool where we could catch our breath. The current then got me again and before I knew it I was heading off down the river...Jen following behond a moment later. After about 20 metres of zooming we grabbed onto a branch and realised our exit from the rapids was on the other bank...and there was no way on earth we could cross. After a few minutes Jen climbed our bank only to discover she was no standing in an island, all great fun this eh? Eventually we found a creek that wasn't flowing like a prop from a white-water rafting video and we managed to get back to safety...all good fun...?!?!?!

After depositing out (rather muddy) gear back at Sportsworld we headed off to Belnheim where we stayed overnight. The next day we travelled south, past Kaikoura and Christchurch to Akaroa - where we are now. The trip itself was pretty uneventful, punctuated only by text messages from Helen and Rich who we were supposed to be meeting in Queenstown at the weekend (they're going to learn to snowboard - hurrah I won't be the worst on the slopes for at least a day!), it turned out they were heading to...Akaroa, so we booked it at the same place and had a great night catching up, planning the next few days (came to no real conclusions on that one) drinking (and splilling) red wine and eating tacos!! GREAT NIGHT! Jen bumped into Helen this morning and she had a bit of a headache by all accounts...we're both fine, and we're going dolphin swimming today. It's cheaper here than Kaikoura and there are less people on the boat so we're hoping it'll be really good, we have our camera, and case so hopefully will get some shots.

On last footnote - another bit of trivia really about NZ. We've noticed alot of the road signs warning people not to drive as quickly an the like as they have a massive problem over here with road-deaths...here are a selection of the rather natty signs:

'Drive Wild, Kill a Child'

'Blood Split, Life Guilt'

'The faster you go the bigger the mess' (lost the ability to rhyme as we went further south seemingly)

'The quick are the dead'

More as we see them...

After today we're heading to Mount Cook and then on to Queenstown where we think it may be a little busy as it's coming towards the end of the ski-season and it's the first day of school holidays on Friday - arghhhhhhhhh, lots of 7 y.o.s whizzing past be at mach 10....nightmare.