Well, the time has finally come for us to write our last blog from New Zealand and prepare to head to Australia. This time tomorrow we'll be in the air, winging our way to pastures new. We're excited about moving on, but sad about leaving NZ. First, I'll bring you up to date with the last week. After our snowboarding extravaganza we left Queenstown to go back to Dunedin for the Lions vs Otago game. In Dunedin we took in the Speights Brewery and the Cadbury factory, sampling plenty of beer and chocolate respectively. We joined the thousands of other rugby fans in the Octagon bars drinking before and after the game, and enjoyed the atmosphere at Carisbrooke stadium. The game itself wasn't great, but there were some choice moments from other supporters. One was on ... read more

Hello! After Queenstown we drove a couple hours south to Te Anau, a lovely wee town on the edge of Fiordland, NZ's biggest national park and home to lots of wild forest, spectacular mountains and beautiful fiords. Te Anau is the base for walking some of NZ's 'great walks', including the 4 day Milford Track, but they aren't so much fun in winter (due to ice, snow, torrential rain, the Department of Conservation removing some of the bridges during winter - small details!) so we used it as a base to visit the world famous Milford Sound. Milford Sound is a spectacular fiord (carved by glaciers) that leads out to the Tasman Sea and is reached by a very windy, twisty (and icy at this time of year) mountain road. We opted to go by bus ... read more

Wet is for all the rain that we've seen on the West Coast, for the fantastically choppy Tasman Sea, and for the temperate rainforest that surrounds us here. Wild is for some of the weather we've seen, for the rugged scenery and for the day we had glacier hiking yesterday - fantastic. And the west coast of NZ is where we are now. We drove from Nelson over two days, mostly in rainy and overcast weather, through scenery which was stunning when the low cloud broke enough to be able to see it - high mountains, rolling waves, a road which hugged first the Buller river valley then the coastline. We broke the journed in a place called Punakaiki, where we stayed in the most interesting hostel yet - a place called Te Nikau Retreat, which ... read more

Hello! It's been a week since we've had a travelblog, so bear with me - there's lots to tell. We left Napier on Monday morning in pouring rain - so heavy that we considered stopping till it eased off, but then it eased off and we drove across very dull flat countryside in very dull grey weather. We stopped in the (dull, grey) town of Palmerston North for lunch - very uninspiring town so we didn't stay long. We were heading to Wanganui to visit my friend Margaret, who I worked with at Auckland City Council (in fact, it was her job I was doing as she was seconded to another post), but she left ACC the week after me to relocate to Wanganui. They moved into their new house 3 days before we visited (we ... read more

Monday We finally left Auckland at about 2.30 on Monday, having spent the morning packing, tidying Kenny and Luke's house, doing laundry etc. We managed to miss the afternoon rush hour by about 30 minutes (phew!) and headed for the Coromandel. It only took about an hour and a half to get to our first destination - Thames, the main town in the Coromandel. It was getting to the end of the afternoon so we decided to spend the night in Thames rather than drive up the windy twisty road to Coromandel town in the dark. We booked into a backpackers (didn't fancy pitching the tent in the dark either...), which was very comfy but odd because we were the only ones there. On the bright side we had the kitchen to ourselves and cooked our ... read more