Hello Just a little update of the last leg of my journey before spending time with my family and friends here before setting off home. After Queenstown the bus took me to Dunedin, a scottish settlement on the East Coast of the South Island. Dunedin literally means "Edinburgh Of The South" I only spent an afternoon there as I needed to keep moving on the bus to make sure that I could spend a week at Catherine and Adams in Christchurch and a long weekend up with Katie and Sandy in Auckland before my flight home. The Irish people from Queenstown [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Wanaka I got the Magic Bus to Queenstown. I was planning on staying three nights but as it was the school holidays and it was weekend I'd only managed to get a bed for the first night and I wasn't sure what I was going to do after that. The bus dropped me off at Resort Lodge Hostel. The American lady that ran it was very grumpy and unfriendly and everyone was complaining about her but I can't complain about her too much as she did manage to sort me a bed for the three nights, just involving soom [View Full Entry]

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On the bus from Franz Joseph to Queenstown I decided to jump off at a little town called Wanaka. A few people had reccomended the place and I was also planning to have a go at skiing and Pete the farmer had told me that it would be easier and cheaper to get to Cardrona Ski Fields from there are that was his reccomendation as the best place to start my skiing lessons. When I got to Wanaka I'd planned to stay at the Purple Cow but after the bus dropped me off I was told that all the beds were [View Full Entry]

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After leaving the farm Sonia drove me down to Franz Joseph the glacier country where I was going to stay and relax a few days after working for seven days straight and also go on one of the glacier hikes. The hostel that I stayed in was brilliant. It was called Montrose and the guy that ran it - Ray was lovley and helpful. It was the first place that I've come across in NZ to have central heating. I still can't believe that they don't have it! It's freezing cold with snow outside and its fan heaters and single glazed [View Full Entry]

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You might remember a while back I mentioned that I'd joined a scheme called WWOOFing - Willing Workers On Organic Farms. The scheme allows travellers to go and work on farms in exchange for food, accomodation and farming experience. I joined up and managed to find a nice sounding dairy farm on the West Coast of the South Island in a little village called Whataroa. The job description was ''Milking cows, shearing sheep, some horse riding and general farm chores'' I decided it sounded okay so I set off to give it a go. When I arrived at the farm I [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone! I've just got back from my week working on a dairy farm in Whararoa and I am in Franz Joseph the glacier county and preparing to go off on a glacier hike tomorrow. The farm was excellent and was a real eye opener, I got lots of good photos to so it will hopefully be an interesting blog, but for now here is the blog for the two days I spent in the Golden Bay area before going to the farm. After finished the Abel Tasman walk I decided to hire a car again and head up to the [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone Well I am going to have to miss out two blogs here because I've done something really stupid. I've left all the photos of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing and my time down in Christchurch with Cat & Adam on a CD at Cat & Adams house. I had to clear my memory card to use in my new camera (my other one broke when I was doing the crossing) so I saved everything onto a CD and then left it there for safekeeping! Whoops, nevermind I'll just add those two on at the end when I get the CD [View Full Entry]

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Hello This blog is from a while back now! When I was doing the walk my camera broke. I had to get a new one and the photos wouldn't save onto the memory card until I formatted it, so I copied everything onto a disk, formatted the memory card and then left the disk for safe keeping down at Catherine & Adams whilst I did the rest of my trip so now I didn't have the photos of Taupo & the Crossing or any of the time I'd just spent down in Christchurch so I couldn't add them to the blog [View Full Entry]

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The trip down to Rotarua on the Magic Bus wasn't great - I think I have come to the realisation that I have booked the wrong bus for what I want! I just wanted something like the Greyhound Bus in Australia that would take me from A - B with no fuss but the Magic Bus is more like a guided tour and what should have been about a four hour journey from Auckland to Rotorua ended up taking ten hours. It's actually a bit of a rip off, they stop everywhere for you to do expensive activities and if you [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Napier and saying a sad goodbye to Harma and the nice hostel owner Doug I set off up to Auckland to go and meet my brother in laws cousin Katie, who lives up there. We had been texting and emailing each other for a while and we were both looking forward to meeting each other. I got off the train to her work in Penrose and a lady approached me. I went to drop all my bags and give her a massive hug but then she said "are you Katies friend?' and then directed me across the road. Whoops [View Full Entry]

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