by the fire...

so saturday my plan of having a drink at the pub and going to bed was foiled by the rugby match and hanging out with the group of irish i met on the glacier hike - never a chance of keeping up with them! anyway, made it to bed around 3:30... then an 8am bus to fox glacier. pouring in the morning on sunday. cleared up enough and i took a LONG hike out to the glacier by myself. also another short one around in the rainforest. so incredible to see this temperate rainforest leading right up a mountain side into a glacier. fox glacier is longer but flatter then franz josef. a nice hostel here too. the town of fox is much more quiet then franz josef. basically nothing here. but nice to be away from it all taking it easy. stayed up for awhile last night just watching movies with people. relaxing. a good sleep in this morning helped too. scheduled to go sky diving at 1pm so i headed over to the place around noon. very busy there as the weather was bad in the morning and some people had jumps canceled. watched the people before me go and the sky clouded over - when they got back thought the day might be over. sent up a promise to be good and the sky cleared more then it was before. so up we went - the other person jumping was a guy traveling from the czech republic. just the 2 of us and the 2 instructors up in this little cessna. all the way to 12,ooo ft. about the same height as mount cook i believe. actually got to really see all of the southern alps and look down on the glacier. above the low layer of clouds it is sunny and you can look out to the whole range. also watch the sun gleam off the tasman sea not so far away. and then over the site... shoved out the door and falling, screaming. not so much the fear as it was with bungi jumping. just awesomeness. falling at 200kph. watching the plane fly away and the mountains recede. hit the cloud layer and the parachute pulls you up short. then the glide down is silent, peaceful, watch the green get closer. gorgeous views. safe landing but still took my ears awhile to finally pop back to normal. an incredible experience. so lucky to get it in today! the rest of today has just been wandering, hanging out. tomorrow a bus to queenstown