Postcards from Middle Earth VI

Despair, despair! Oh wail and weep! This has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with New Zealand, but it's impt to me nonetheless; NZ information will be found below. I just found out the other day that U2 released its concert dates and 1) they're not playing in Toronto or Montreal, at least not at this point and 2)I don't have tickets yet. This is just a subliminal message to all that whoever can snag me a ticket to go with them to see U2 will be forever owed my affection and devotion...
Back to the point: I am now winding up my New Zealand leg of my trip and am flying out to Fiji in the morning. Since my last postcard, I have seen mountains, glaciers, blue lakes, waterfalls, beaches, ancient towering forests, and great fjords. Of course, I've been playing on the South Island of New Zealand. I've actually been on a helicopter that dropped me on a glacier, and then I went hiking on blue ice! And I didn't slip and fall down! That was an experience! I also went sailing on the Tasman Sea (briefly), and have climbed a few more small mountains. I actually also just missed out on a free bungy jump, but that's a whole other story, but suffice it to say that I didn't end up going :(.
As this was the last weekend that I'm here in New Zealand, I finally travelled to the city that my sister lives in (Christchurch), in order to spend some more time with her before I leave. Lovely city. I like it quite a lot, actually. At any rate, in order to help educated her about why New Zealand is so important in the order of nature, I finally got her to watch one of the LOTR movies. Now, this is a girl who has never read any of the books, and has never tolerated sitting through any of the movies in its entirety. (Yes, yes, I know: Hard to believe she's related to me) So we had some takeaway fish and chips and watched The Fellowship of the Ring. And she disliked it greatly. Siiiigh. On the plus side, I did actually recognize some of the scenery (well, OK, mainly the mountain ranges - a field just looks like a field after a while).
I fly out to Fiji tomorrow, so I suspect that this will be the end of this series of PFTE this time around: I have been told that internet in Fiji is pricey (in the range of 40 cents/minute for dial up service), so I may not necessarily be able to write you directly from the beach havens of Viti Levu. However, if the internet rumours are unfounded, then I will endeavour to write something about Fijian culture, outside of the well known facts that they were a major cannibalistic culture and their narcotic national drink of kava.
Love you all!
julia