Like I said before, Lou and I had certain things on our list of activities to accomplish during our south island road trip. Aside from bouldering at Castle Hill and swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura, one of the items on the list with the highest priority was skydiving. I wanted to dive in Abel Tasman because the outline of the land has such a neat shape and I suspected you would see all the beautiful beaches in the national park, as well as the surrounding mountains and maybe even Nelson from afar (there are also rumors that on a really clear day you can see the north island!) Lou, on the other hand, had it in her mind that she wanted to do it in Taupo, on the north island (I’m sure also a beautiful place with its huge lake and stunning mountains nearby). Somehow she was able to wait to go with me (since that was the plan that didn’t work out for my birthday back in January) and we set ourselves up to do it in Abel Tasman.
Well, the weather decided otherwise and by the time we were together in Nelson it took a turn toward dark and dreary – nothing good for jumping out of a plane! We decided it wasn’t a good idea to wait around just to see if the weather happened to improve in the next couple days, and set off on our road trip instead. We decided to head towards Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers and thought it would be a good compromise to do our skydive there. We chose Franz Joseph due to the elevation of the drop and when we realized we would be seeing Mt. Cook (one of Lou’s absolute favorite places in NZ) on the way down, excitement began to grow!
