As we had hoped, the day of our trip to Milford Sound dawned fine but very cold. During the night it had rained a little and almost snowed on the mountain across the lake but when we peeped out the curtains of Crowded House before dawn I could see stars and felt quite excited. The "Go Milford" mini bus turned up on time out the front of the Top 10 and we tore ourselves away from the fire in the reception office and jumped on board. Our driver, Rhys (or Reece?) is a veteran of 17 years driving from Te Anau to Milford Sound and soon had us relaxed and enjoying the drive. The drive begins at 200m above sea level in Te Anau town and climbs up to 940m at the Homer Tunnel where you ... read more

25 April ANZAC DAY At long last it's time to catch up with the blog. The last few days have been so full on that we haven't had time to do much else than drive, check in for the night, have a feed and sleep. Also, as previously mentioned, the internet is a patchy thing and very costly here. We arrived in the beautiful city of Dunedin on the eve of Anzac Day (which is very big here of course!) and at one stage I even had patriotic thoughts of getting up for the dawn service in Dunedin. However, we had booked on the Taieri Gorge Train on Anzac Day morning and as it leaves the station at 9am we thought it might be cutting things too fine. Plus, it was cold at 5.30 am so ... read more

Well the show has moved on and Crowded House packed up and we set out on Sunday 22nd for Mt Cook. After replenishing the stores and using the dump station and refueling at Lake Tekapo we headed north west along the stunning Lake Pukaki which, along with 2 other major lakes in the centre of this area produces hydro electricity. The roads are so good in this part of NZ that it is hard not to speed and we enjoyed great lengths of time with not anotrher car in sight. It is now fairly quiet tourist wise and we have had no trouble getting in any parks. The weather is beautiful, warm during the day but very cold at night and we now have the extra blanket and heater on at night. Approaching Mt Cook was ... read more

Well, so much has happened since we started that it's difficult to keep it all in perspective. After dropping of our excess and unwanted items (too much baggage again!) at our friends place we set out south from Christchurch to Akaroa. Having read so much about this place we were still thrilled by the spectacular scenery on the way up the mountains and down the other side into the large volcanic waterway with Akaroa and other little villages perched on it's waterfront. Akaroa is a pretty little scenic town which had been settled by the French in 1840 and still is supposed to have descendents from that time living there. They were a tad slow in taking "possession" as trhe Brits beat them to it! The town earns it's tourist reputation from it's "French flavour" which ... read more

Flew over last night from Perth, althought it seems like it was several days ago. A very tiring night with no sleep and arrived at Aucklkand at 2am our time (Perth time and 6am NZ time. the dawn was just breaking into an absolutely beautiful day with clear skies and lots of fog around the hills. However we were too tired to appreciate it as we had to go thru customs and quarantine and then re check thru domestic terminal to catch our flight to Christchurch an hour later. We had to carry our checked baggage to another section then WALK (stagger and puff!) almost a kilometer along a "green painted line" to the domestic terminal. This is outside along the road, at 3am we were glad it was fine. The flight down to Christchurch was ... read more