As soon as I set foot in Napier, I realised that my mum, a lover of all things 1930s, would fall in love with it here. Most of Napier was destroyed by an earthquake in 1931 and had to be rebuilt and therefore most of the architecture is in the art deco style, which the town continues to embrace. Its an absolutely delightful little town, with wonderful examples of art deco wherever you look, it's almost like you've stepped back in time. We did our own little tour, taking photos galore of all the wonderful buildings and stopping off for a [View Full Entry]

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Having made good time driving from Nelson to Picton, rather than waste a night in Picton, we decided to chance our arm on changing our ferry ticket to the North Island to go that very afternoon and as luck would have it, we could! After a choppy 3 hour crossing, we arrived in Wellington and booked into the Capital Gateway Motor Inn. This park seemed nothing more than a carpark with a small kitchen and bathroom consisting of 2 showers and 1 toilet, all for the extortionate price of 27 dollars per person! It was the most expensive yet, with the [View Full Entry]

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A 3 hour drive later and we arrived in Nelson, booking in to the Tahuna Beach Holiday Park. Nelson has a nice town centre and we has a stroll around the Saturday markets where we just had to indulge in a bun with our flask of tea! We then took a longer stroll around the Nelson Lakes National Park, enjoying the views of the lake and the sunshine, which was a welcome change from the cold and wet weather we had been experiencing. We had a night out in Nelson, ending up at the Little Rock club, which by all accounts, [View Full Entry]

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The longer we spend in New Zealand, the more we are astounded by just what an incredible and varied country it is. From the snow capped mountains and beautiful mirror lakes of the the South Island and now to the volcanic terrain of the North. Truly amazing. Staying right by Lake Taupo at the Great Lake holiday park, our first day was spent at the Huka Falls waterfall, where after marvelling at the waterfall, we then walked for an hour up to a natural thermal spa where we dipped our hands and feet in the warm bath water. We drove to [View Full Entry]

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Hanmer Springs is most notable for its thermal spa pools and easing our aching limbs after all the hiking we'd done in the last couple weeks was the main thing on our minds. We enjoyed a nice meal and a couple beers in the local the night before and then, donning bikinis and freezing our behinds off in what seemed like subzero temperatures, we skipped from one hot spa to the next, luxuriating in the 38 degree bath like pools. Ahh bliss. The only problem with a couple of the 9 pools at the spa was the smell of sulphur that [View Full Entry]

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As there is nowhere to stay at the Milford Sound, the nearest place to stop is Te Anau. This is where our criminal life began. The Great Lakes Holiday Park had good facilities and a lovely TV room with a roaring log fire and so this was the place where we attempted our first blag at only paying for one of us to stay, so whilst Geen did the bizz booking in etc, yours truly hid out in the back and pretended she was invisible. Result! We were in, paying only $13.50 instead of $26. Which made us feel somewhat guilty, [View Full Entry]

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During our drive from Wanaka down to Queenstown we stopped off at the small but very pretty Arrowtown, with it's street lined with quaint shops selling all kinds of nick-nacks, but mainly all things sheep skinned from what we could see. After topping up the old supplies at the ubiquitous lolly shop (they call chocolate covered honeycomb, aka, crunchie bar, hokey pokey here. Love it!) we set off for Queenstown. Checked into the kiwi camping ground (Lakeview, I think it was called) which was a short walk from the town. The facilities were excellent but it aggrieved us somewhat that they [View Full Entry]

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With the confidence of hardened crims (ha ha!) we blagged our way into the Dunedin Holiday Park. This place, whilst comfortable enough, gave me the creeps a bit because it was so dark and every time I went the toilet I kept hearing strange noises . . maybe just a guilty conscience. Getting our priorities right, the first place we visited was the Cadbury Factory. Its a whole Willy Wonka world for adults and whilst the whole spiel about how many litres of milk goes into a bar and what the productivity levels are like is all very interesting, not being [View Full Entry]

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We (or should I say Geen) booked into the Glentanner Camp park. What amazing views we were greeted with, simply wonderful to wake up to those snow capped mountains all around you. Having to stock up on fuel and provisions, it took us a while to get started on our intended walk, the Hooker Valley trail. With an estimated walking time of 3-4 hours we thought "piece of cake", but we should have known better considering our vanity and the apparent need for us to take a photo of ourselves with the ever approaching Mt Cook behind us at every turn! [View Full Entry]

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Flying into Christchurch, we thought we had mentally prepared ourselves for the biting cold, but with our breath blowing out and our extremities turning blue, we had a moment of doubt . .6 whole weeks in a campervan in this climate? Hmm . . Spending our last night of comfort in a motel, we collected our dear little backpacker van the next day and set off to find ourselves!! ha! ha! Not really, just the nearest campsite where we could plug in the heater and defrost. God bless electricity! We stayed at a Kiwi holiday park in Christchurch and paid 28 [View Full Entry]

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