The deep breath before the plunge.

I almost don't get let into New Zealand. The man behind the desk has a serious issue deciding whether or not I am the person in my passport photo. It's only about four years old but I have changed a lot in that time. Amy makes jokes that he doesn't seem to appreciate and then a dried leaf decides to fall from my passport. Bringing any sort of foreign plant life into this country is extremely regulated, there is no way my leaf would make the cut. The offending item is put in quarantine and I, thankfully and eventually, get let in.

We leave the airport and I am instantly struck by how much it feels like home. We are a million miles away from Australia. It is Scotland in late Spring. The air is cool and crisp, warmth only found in the sun. The mountains are familiar, barren and wild. Everything speaks of home, from the smell in the air to the taste in the water (Fraser Island can jog on, this real water). Even the animals. I find myself recognising birds, trees and bees where in Australia I knew none.

Even here though there are always reminders to pull you back. To make you realise you are nowhere near home. Whether it's the accents or the plugs or crossing the road. I find myself almost constantly disturbed by the fact the the sun moves left across the sky and not right. And that at midday it's in the North. I never thought I paid that much attention to it back home.

Queenstown itself is small, much smaller than I had expected. Its resident population, at sixteen thousand, is only a few of thousand bigger than my hometown of Linlithgow. The tourists can double or triple this number, depending on the time of year.

The town itself is nice, it feels friendly and welcoming, but that is not the reason people come here. Queenstown is nestled between the shores of Lake Wakatipu and the mountains. Every direction you look jagged hills tower above you. They are beauteous and imposing, I can see instantly why this is claimed as the highlight of New Zealand.

It is our first night and a friend of Amy's who she hasn't seen in over a year is in town. We meet up and drink too much Gin (I blame duty free) then wake up back in the hostel. No one knows any more than that.

We spend the day wandering around the town and the shores of Lake Wakatipu. It is huge, shaped like a lightning bolt with three parts of which we only ever see two. Each arm individually is at least the size of Loch Lomond. The water is the clear icy blue of glacial melt. It looks, feels and tastes achingly fresh. It is saturated with mica from the hills around and seems to fluoresce with the colours of the surrounding landscape.

Almost wherever we go in Queenstown we get a view of The Remarkables. These form one of only two mountain ranges in the world that run directly from North to South. And are so named not only for this but because they are different from all the hills around. Where most have smooth edges and jagged tops, as I am used to, having been worn away by the ice ages, these mountains are strong and new. They are cragged and pointed from peak to root. The ridge is like a blade, with blades below it.

Walking back into town the vibe could not be more relaxed. The sun is out and people sit in groups on the grass enjoying an afternoon beer or bottle of wine. We pass a man playing his piano by the wharf. He is entirely self taught, he doesn't read music, he doesn't know how to play any known pieces. All he plays is music he creates, and it is beautiful. It drifts through the air, relaxing and inspiring. I could sit on the grass and listen all day. He used to travel the world with his piano in the back of his van (it is on wheels courtesy of one of his friends) but now he has settled in Queenstown. We go to the supermarket to buy our food for the week and I find something that shocks me to my core.

I wonder if I can sue them for false advertising. Christmas is approaching and the shops are starting to fill with decorations, gifts, and crackers. You will never guess what they call crackers out here. Amy points out the packet and I crack up. I mean really, Bon-Bon's??

We spend a while chatting to the girls in the information centre (one of whom is from Montrose!) about things to do around the town. We want to skydive at some point but are unsure where we want to do it. In the end we book a boat trip around the Milford Sound and, of course, a Lord of the Rings tour of the surrounding area.

The next morning we are up early for a walk up the nearby hill of Ben Lomond. It is a snow capped mountain behind Queenstown that we are told offers wonderful views in all directions. It comes in at 1700m (Queesntown itself can be found at 308m) so it is quite a decent climb. I later discover it is infact 400m higher than Ben Nevis! And it's smaller than most of the other mountains around; it is easy to forget how much bigger everything is than back home.

The first part of the day is spent making our way through what feels like Forestry Commission woodland. In the woods it is dark and dank. Queen Buff-Tailed Bumblebees clumsily buzz through the air, looking for a place to set up a nest for the summer. Again I could be at home in Scotland. Amy feels the same, it could be the Lake District. This part of New Zealand is even called The Lakes District and you can find it written across the buildings. We pass a signpost and are reminded just how far away home is.

We break the treeline and New Zealand reveals itself. We get our first proper view of Ben Lomond, having already climbed a good seven hundred meters, a forest nestled between two of its mighty arms.

We reach a saddle, about an hours steep climb from the summit, and are rewarded with a new landscape before us. We look behind and see the mountains that dominate Queenstown, they are vast and swarthy. Squatting over the side of the lake, snowy caps blending into wisps of cloud. Beside them are the Remarkables, ever present. Before us is a fresh view, row upon row of mountains, blending through green to brown to dazzling white. Their roots twist and spread across the valley before me. They could be one great creature, slumbering coiled since time long spent, waiting to spread its godly limbs across the world.

Just before the summit I abandon Amy and speed my way up across snow fields and jagged rocks. I reach the top and rarely have I seen a view like it. It is what I have just described and more. It is everywhere, you cannot get away, you don't know where to look. Every direction offers something new and something stunning. There is a pillar at the top with arrows pointing to the mountains around. Ben Nevis pokes up from behind the Remarkables. A German arrives to meet his friends who are already there. He has no shoes on. Amy arrives and we take all the photos. I stand on the pillar and try to capture the scale.

The descent is long and arduous. I find going uphill so much easier. My knee starts to pain me so I end up with a walking stick walking backwards down hills. Amy tackles the paths at a zig-zag to reduce the slope. I am reminded of family holidays where both these techniques are readily employed.

That night we are exhausted, we chill out in the common room watching a film. An Irish guy asks me if I enjoyed my cheese the other night. I have no idea who he is. He explains how on my first night I went out and bought myself some pasta and cheese. He says I was munching on the block (nothing new there) and offering it around. I find his story hard to believe. As if I would just hand out my cheese.

We are picked up for our Lord of the Rings tour by a very Kiwi guy in a four by four. The weather is cloudy but it does not matter. He used to be a world class mountain biker and is very involved in local outdoor activities. He turned down a part in the films to be paid to bike across South America for a documentary. His wife was locations manager on the Lord of the Rings films and he now does these tours in his spare time. He knows a lot about Queenstown, its history and its geography. He talks about glaciers and plants and gold. And of course about Peter Jackson and LotR. A couple of times I have to stop myself correcting him when he gets a fact about the films wrong.

Between Queenstown and the Remarkables is a hill called Deer Park Heights which was used quite extensively in The Two Towers. Warg battles and treks across Rohan. I had been wanting to visit it but unfortunately the owner closed it to the public a couple of years ago. We are taken to the River Anduin where the Argonath were placed. I am amazed by Peter Jackson's ability to play with size. In reality the river is small, but well placed cameras and appropriate zooming along with huge digital statues make it appear vast on screen.

The Remarkables it seems were used many times in each film, depicting many different mountain ranges. They were filmed with snow, with cloud and bare. From far off and from close up, each time appearing different. He shows us clips from the film and points out the locations we are at. If you ever see a dramatic mountain range in a distant shot, it is probably the Remarks. The vast close up shots of mountains, such as are seen at the opening of the Two Towers and during the lighting of the beacons are further west in the great Southern Alps, home of the largest mountains in New Zealand.

We are taken to the Ford of Brunien, where Arwyn defied the Nazgul, for lunch. It is hard to recognise it because filming took place about fifteen years ago and rivers like this change so much. Besides that in the film the background is a different river altogether. This happens a lot, there will be a single image on screen but parts of it will be from near Queenstown, parts from up in the North Island and parts entirely created, either through use of models or a computer. Despite this it is still beautiful and ridiculously exciting. Amy and I recreate scenes as we go.

We are not meant to be able to visit the ford because the river is too high right now. Our guide seems adventurous and fun so drives straight into the water anyway. We criss cross our way up the river, occasionally just driving directly up or down it. Water flows over the car bonnet and splashes up the windows.

We are taken down Skippers Canyon, an impressive rocky valley with mountains looming in the distance. The road carved into the side of the hill here was built in the 1880's entirely by hand. The Shotover River here still holds the record as one of the greatest gold bearing rivers in the world, it is the reason New Zealand flourished from a failing colony into its own country. This road was built to access the higher reaches of the river flowing straight from the hills.

Our final stop gives us a view across the basin behind Queenstown that we have spent the day traversing. We hear of how the land was formed and why it is so different from the rest of the world. New Zealand is the last significant landmass to emerge from the sea. The mountains here are still young and strong. They proudly display their youth in jagged peaks and boldly sharp edges. They have not been worn down by time and ice as much as any that we see in Europe. This was also the last landmass on Earth to be inhabited. I was amazed to find out that the Maori only arrived here seven hundred years ago (the Aboriginal peoples have inhabited Australia for about fifty thousand years), only four hundred years before the Europeans wantonly staked their own claim.

We catch the bus at ten to seven to Te Anu, on the edge of Fiordland National Park (no I haven't spent it wrong, here they spell Fjord with an i). Our first day is grey grey grey. We go for a walk around the edge of Lake Te Anu. This is the largest lake in Australasia although we can only see one small arm of it from were we are. We walk through forests that shift from the familiar to the unknown in minutes. We eat lunch on the move to avoid the flies and eventually find ourselves back at the hostel, exhausted but ready for tomorrow and Milford Sound.

The bus to Milford takes us along the edge of the lake and then through the Milford valley. It is the most picturesque drive I have been on in my life. If we had had to do it ourselves we probably would never have made it all the way. Prepare yourself for a slew of photographs. The lake itself is beautiful and mirrored. Fjords extend away from us on the far side and mountains stretch up and down. A thin line of cloud clasps the edge on the hills dividing lush forested slopes from craggy snow topped peaks.

We head into the National Park itself and the mountains soar above us. They are vast. Simply vast. I find it hard to describe the beauty that I witness, having seen so much already. We catch glimpses down hidden valleys that rise to great white peaks. Glacial streams tinged with the purest teal cut through a grey blue stone. The water cold as a clear winters night and fresh as the following dawn. It glides down your throat like glass, filling you with an icy vigour.

I am amazed by the ability of the plant life to cling to the sides of these mountains. High above us, on slopes that are almost vertical, tendrils and patches of green work their way up from the valley floor. They stem from a great Beech forest through which we pass. White, Brown, Red and Black. They are unlike the Common Beech we see back home, grand and tall with limbs spread wide. To me this feels like an Oak forest. The trees are gnarled and twisted, moss clings to every branch. It feels ancient and magical, you could step off the road and be lost in an instant. A waterfall surges through it, the deep earthy green contrasting with the bright sapphire blue. Both colours that scream of life.

Milford Sound was originally named Milford Haven. Captain Cook, on his many journeys around New Zealand, failed to discover this natural wonder. On his maps it is marked as a small bay, for the entrance is hidden from the sea. Captain John Grono  was washed up here in a storm in 1812 and I can only imagine the awe he must have felt. To discover this place of beauty. To be the first eyes to gaze upon these lofty heights. Of course it was previously known by the Maori, but to him it would have felt new.

He named it Milford Haven and it was later, incorrectly, changed to Milford Sound. It is not a sound but a fjord. A sound is a river valley that has flooded with water whereas a fjord is an inlet created by glacial erosion. This gives it steep sides and deep waters. Our boat departs from the innermost point and takes us past the wonders of Mitre Peak, shaped like a bishops hat from the right angle.

We drive along the edge of the sound and pass penguins, dolphins and seals. Waterfalls cascade like thousands of tiny sprites, each one shedding droplets of water in fireworks as it falls. They are all around, they pour from the hilltops into the depths below. We are but fifty meters from the edge and yet the water extends for almost two hundred underneath us. In the centre of the fjord it can reach three hundred meters deep.

We make a brief trip out to the Tasmen sea to see the coast stretching on either side then we return down the other side of the fjord. The water here is a bright turquoise, almost green, and cliffs drop dramatically into its depths. We approach a waterfall. It strikes the sea with a fury and waves of mist expand outwards in ever expanding circles. We get closer and have to hold on for the force of the wind it is expelling in all directions. It feels like some primeval force, we face it and are found wanting. The air is a blanket of raging water, inhibiting breathing and blocking sight. We retreat, soaked and thrilled.

The journey home is the same as the journey out yet I find it even more stunning. I do not know if it is because I am on a different side of the bus or if it is the different light but again I cannot keep my finger off my camera. Rivulets of crystal pour from mountain tops and glaciers, streaming down cliffs and over ledges where they disperse on the wind into countless shards, not one reaching the valley floor. Strands of hair floating on a breeze.

The next morning we return to Queenstown. We have one day before we head north and it is the nicest day yet. The temperature is up and the sky is perfectly clear. The Remarkables are radiant and Lake Wakatipu is at its bluest yet. We cannot decide what to do. We think about a game of frisbee golf or a few beers in the sun. And then we have an idea. We think why not, there couldn't be a better day for it. So we do it. An hour later we do it.

We fall from the sky.