Leaving Queenstown with our new bus driver 'Grumpy Pete', we drove to Te Anau, a small town that until the proposed tunnel from Queenstown to Milford is built, is the gateway to the Sounds. We stayed in Te Anau Lakeview Holiday Park, which was pretty accurately named.. After checking in, we got back on the bus and headed for Milford Sound. Arriving in mid-afternoon, it was quite cloudy but we hoped the weather would hold. We went on the Real Journeys catermaran along the sound towards the Tasman sea. It was a beautiful place with many waterfalls cascading down from the [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in the bustling adrenaline capital of New Zealand and booked into the Discovery Lodge Hostel. This was another purpose built brand new facility much like Base with 8 bunkbeds to a room and ensuite Shower facilities. After dinner and a quick browse around town, we joined the Stray gang in the Altitude Bar under the hostel and took good advantage of the two for one offers on wine and Export Gold. Met up with some of the guys from the previous bus who were still in Queenstown, Mat,Glen,Rob,Sally to name a few, and carried on to the World Bar, a [View Full Entry]

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Drove into Franz Josef and immediately booked ourselves onto the 3/4 day hike especially organised to fit in with the Stray tours for the following day. We stayed in a portacabin at the Rainforest retreat, and were abit disappointed to find their Spa empty! The Franz Josef Glacier Guides company was quite a big outfit. They gave us all the necessary kit for the hike, including boots and 'Talonz', crampons specially made to fit the leather boots. We went by minibus to the foot of the valley, then walked for an hour to the terminal face of the Glacier. It was [View Full Entry]

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On arrival in Barrytown, we'd arranged to be picked up by Jim and Margaret Park. They are friends of my (Jeremys) mums from her days in St Lucia. They drove us down to their place at Lake Kaniere, inland from Hokitika. Their house is built on poles which means that they have great views over the trees out across the lake to the mountains in the distance. A really lovely place, with all kinds of different woods used for the walls, floors and staircases. We also met their dog Maverick for the first time. He's a gentle giant and we [View Full Entry]

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We'd found a hostel in the Lonely Planet that was a short walk from the beach, and headed straight down to the beach for our first sunbathing session. It was a great beach and we lazed around for a few hours watching the kite surfers and doing crosswords but not venturing into the water as it was freezing! One of Lin's goals coming to New Zealand was to do a Paraglide. Having done parasailing in Bay of Islands, this was the next step and she arranged for a trip with Nelson Paragliding. Her instructor Stuart drove us from the Hostel to [View Full Entry]

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After the excitement of the Skydive and Tongariro Crossing, we slowed down for abit on what was essentially a travel day to Wellington. The journey was broken up by a stop at the home of the World Wellyboot Throwing championships. The 'wellies'were a pair of size 10s that we picked up from the town hall, and had great fun hurling up the special "Arena". Lin was up there in the girls event, and I sneaked the mens with a narrow victory! Arrived at the Base Backpackers in Wellington. This was a brand new purpose built hostel with electronic lockers, basement bar [View Full Entry]

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As we drove into Taupo just before 4pm, the gathering clouds were looking like they might spoil the party. I'd put my name down for a Skydive with Skydive Taupo, but with the weather worsening by the minute it was likely that we wouldn't be able to jump, and the afternoon was our only option as we were due to leave Taupo early the next day. At this point Lin was still sticking to her story that "there's no way she'd be jumping from a perfectly good plane!" (We'll see!). Our bus driver Woz phoned up the dive centre and they [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Roturua, we decided to leave the group at the Base hostel and go to Hot Rocks hostel instead. The hot pools here were not so attractive as they sounded due to the rotten egg smell, so we avoided these, but the Lava Bar next door proved good fun. Rotorua was also our first real insight into the Maori culture. Stray had organised a visit to 'Slim's Cultural Evening', which actually wasn't hosted by Slim, but a huge Maori guy called Roy. He greeted us in the traditional Maori fashion by touching foreheads. So hard to keep a straight face! [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Hahei behind, we drove towards Raglan on the West coast. Raglan beach is famous for having one of the worlds longest lefthand breaks (surfer speak for waves coming into shore from the left I think!). When we arrived at the Rainforest Lodge, there was so much booze going into the fridge we couldn't shut the door. A good sign of things to come. The lodge was really nice and had lots of facilities, and extras including a high ropes course and a flying fow (zipline). We had a laugh on this and managed not to fall or hurt ourselves despite [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Auckland for a second time, (and the Fat Camel hostel thank goodness. No clean linen and they hadn't cleaned the room from our last visit!), we were picked up outside the hostel by Warren (Woz) in his big orange Stray Bus. It was pretty much full when we got on and after stopping at the YHA, Backpackers, and City hostels we had a full house (bus). Woz began (as he would everyday) by giving a run down of the plan for the day, outlining our stops for sights, places of interest, shop stops and accommodation. The activities/ accommodation organised or [View Full Entry]

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