Another month flies by!  Just about to head to the airport to catch my flight to South America!  I caught the bus four hours north from Rotorua to Auckland yesterday morning, returning me to when I started the NZ adventure.  Its been a brilliant month, NZ is a really great country, amazing scenery, friendly people, [...]

This town stinks!!! Literally, due to the large amount of geothermal activity in the area there is a lot of sulpher in the air, resulting in a ‘bad egg smell’! You get used to it after a while though, except at the geothermal parks where it is a little overpowering.  The town has been built [...]

Yesterday I travelled six hours by bus from Wellington to Taupo – a long journey but one I had to do at some point.  Taupo is a largish town in the centre of the North Island, at the north of Lake Taupo.  The lake is very large, 50km by 30km, with nice clean [...]

Today I caught the ferry across the Cook Strait (between  North and South Islands)  from Picton to Wellington.  I was up early to catch the bus from Motueka to Nelson, and then from there I caught another to Picton.  Travelling on route through NZ’s wine region, lots and lots of vineyards!  Apparently this is because [...]

Sorry to hear about all the snow back home, just to make you feel better it’s been absolutely scorching here for the past few days!!  I’ve spent the past two days sea kayaking around the Abel Tasman national park.  Paddling around in the  calm turquoise waters around the park has been excellent.

The sea is amazingly [...]

I said goodbye to Mum and Katie on Monday night, we had a nice Lamb dinner in Christchurch – even having dessert, probably the poshest meal I’ll have for a while!  I then went back to hostel life   Even worse I had to be up at 6am to catch the bus north to [...]

We’ve spent the last couple of days cruising up the East coast back to Christchurch.  After catching the ferry back to the mainland we drove about an hour from Invergaril and stayed overnight in the Catlins.  The Catlins is a nice region between Invergaril and Dunedin.  Not so mountainous as the West Coast, more rolling [...]

I’m as far south as you can go in NZ, on NZ’s third Island, Stewart Island. The journey over is notoriously choppy and today was no exception – you’d of loved it Carol – I was feeling a bit naucious! The Island is a haven for wildlife, in particular rare birds. We [...]

It’s been another busy few days!  On Monday morning it was raining in Wanaka so we had a look round the shops and had a nice lunch in one of the many cafes there.  The weather is very changeable here, in the afternoon it was a bright sunny day!  So we drove down through Queenstown [...]

We’ve kept on trucking down the west coast and inland slightly to the small town of Wanaka.  Yesterday I was allowed a lie in (till 9am!) and it was nice to have a day at a slower pace.  The weather was really good yesterday, proper shorts and flip flops temperature   From Franz Josef [...]