Marlborough, an area renowned for its great wine (especially Sauvignon Blanc), its green-lipped mussels, its Sounds (long fingers of water that stretch out of the northern coast), its sunshine hours (highest in NZ) and for having absolutely nothing to do with the tobacco industry. It also serves as the point of transition to the north island - ferries depart from Picton to Wellington (and vice versa) several times a day. Four towns each with its own unique character (whether good or bad), service the area but once again it's natures influence that has the greatest impact. Ble [View Full Entry]

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Motueka is the gateway to the Abel Tasman national park, on the North Western coastline of the South Island. From here we hired camping equipment and packed our food for a two day mini expedition into this popular National Park - a small taster but all we could squeeze in as our departure for the North Island was drawing closer. On our first day, we arranged for a water taxi to zip us along the western coastline, dropping off our provisions at Bark Bay where we planned to camp that night and then taking us to our starting point at Totaranui. [View Full Entry]

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To follow up on our suggestion that Dunedin is a very Scottish town, we wouldn't hesitate to say that Christchurch is a very English town. Christchurch is the South Island's biggest city with a population of around 350,000. To give you an idea of its "Englishness", we can go directly to place names - Christchurch is in the region of Canterbury, it has a river running through it, the Avon, (littered with punts) which has two embankment streets named Oxford and Cambridge Terrace. T thinks the central architecture is reminiscent of Oxbridge colleges although I think that St Anne's college wo [View Full Entry]

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Possum Killer The West Coast tour provided me with one of the funiest moments of our travels so far - at Laura's expense! We set off from Dunedin after lunch, made a quick stop at the Moeraki boulders so by the time we hit the westward road it was after 4pm. As it would become clear, this was pushing it, especially since we wanted to get as far as Fox Glacier nearly 400 km away. Laura drove from the boulders following the road that ran alongside the rail trail into familiar territory at Wanaka. I took over the wheel through the [View Full Entry]

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Dunedin or "The Edinurgh of the South" as it's known on account of its architecture and Scottish-influenced history, was a surprise highlight for us. We didn't originally intend to spend more than a day there at best - "drive-thru Dunedin" was the original plan. As it happened, our visit coincided with Dunedin's Fringe Festival, (another parallel with Edinburgh) so we stayed a little longer to soak up the atmosphere and see some "down under" style comedy. Dunedin itself is a perfect gateway city for exploring the Catlins coast, the Otago peninsula and the Cental Otago region. We had two sti [View Full Entry]

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The idea to cycle the Otago Central Rail Trail came straight out of the Rough Guide - a 150Km, 3-day bike ride from Clyde to Middlemarch, really appealed. Originally the Otago Central Branch Railway was built (completed in 1921) to support the gold rush in the valleys of Otago, transporting important supplies to the then booming towns along the way. As its demand became less important and road regulations changed the line became uneconomical to run and was closed down. The DOC bought the disused line seeing its recreational potential and created the rail trail for all to enjoy. It is [View Full Entry]

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Our drive along the Southern Scenic Route beginning from Fiordland and ending in the beautiful Catlins region, was undertaken in two stages. It began before our Stewart Island excursion due to a slight hiccup in the ferry reservations, so with a day to burn, we covered the coastline west of Invercargill on a whistlestop tour of the recommended sights. On our return from Stuey, we spent two more days of solid touring along the eastern section before reaching the major city of Dunedin. We would definitely say that the eastern section has a far greater abundance of jaw droppers but can' [View Full Entry]

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The third and smallest of New Zealand's three islands, is the kiwi haven of Stewart Island, a mere boat ride South of the South Island across the Foveaux Strait. The reason most people visit is for the pure wilderness of the place, the opportunity to do some cracking tramping and the added bonus of a rare spotting of a kiwi in the wild. We spent a night in Invercargill, a last minute decision made after driving to and making an inspection of the port town of Bluff and deciding th [View Full Entry]

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This is just a collection of our photos we have from Queenstown over the last couple of weeks and a few goodbyes to the friends we've made along the way. It was a hectic time in QT with lots of people coming and going - a result of the lack of recent snowfall and end of the Winter season. Al, a young scallywag from England (but actually of the Cameron clan of the Scottish highlands) headed off back to the UK to start his degree at Bristol Uni. I did have a few vids of him doing some sic snowboarding tricks [View Full Entry]

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Following on from the bungy escapade came our next adrenaline busting feat of craziness, the "Canyon Swing" - the largest swing in the world and this time both of us got involved. So let's start with the basic stats - it's 109m high, you experience 60m of freefall and then fall into a smooth 200m arc at 150kph (93mph). For the record, it was a great deal scarier than the bungy jumps that both of us have done, probably because it's so much higher but also because the jump masters are really cruel up on the platform. We'd both fancied this [View Full Entry]

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