Yesterday, still enamoured with the winter sun we drove up to Amberley and then headed inland towards Mount Grey and the Grey Forest and Grey River. We took a picnic and stopped at Lake Janet and then drove some more unsealed roads down the Grey river for an afternoon's tramp in the bush. Just an excuse to post some pictures and say a quick "G'day"! [View Full Entry]

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Last Sunday, glad that proper winter is here (blue skies and warm days) we drove out to the Otukaikino Reserve near Belfast for a picnic and a walk. This place is pretty special in that it is a sacred Maori area and also currently used as a local memorial walk. We were near to the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, and as we still have annual memberships, we also went in there for a walk in the late afternoon sun. Just an excuse to post some pictures really... [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend we saw the first signs that winter was starting and autumn was on its way out. That is, it stopped raining and the sun came out. We've had an unusually cold and wet autumn and are glad to be back to clear, crisp and sunny days! To celebrate, we headed out to Banks Peninsula and after stopping for lunch in Akaroa we drove out to Le Bons Bay, which we've been meaning to visit for ages. There used to be a very good backpackers there, but it seems to have closed down. Shame, we never got to stay. Le [View Full Entry]

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Despite Tim having a stinking cold, we drove down to Dunedin for the long weekend (Queen's Birthday) and breaking with tradition, we checked into a luxury apartment, complete with double hydrotherapy spa bath. We had been planning this jaunt for a long while, as we only have showers in our own apartment and going more than a year without a bath was proving to be irksome. The weather forecast for the weekend was for a "big chill", and indeed we have been having some unseasonably cold weather over the last month. On the way down we stopped for lunch on a [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday, we drove west out of and sunny-but-cold Christchurch on SH73, through Darfield and Springfield, towards the Southern Alps. We crossed the awesome Korowai Torlesse Tussocklands and arrived at the spectacular limestone rock formations of Kura Tawhiti in time for it to start raining. Kura Tawhiti is a place that we keep driving past, but as it is usually on our way home from a 7 hour drive we had never actually stopped there. We had also planned to go for a walk in the Craigieburn Forest Park a few more kilometres up the road, so we continued on [View Full Entry]

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On Wednesday morning, in order to begin the long journey home, we were up and on the road by 7am. We first drove over the Crown Range which is the highest tar-sealed road in Australasia and stopped for a short while at the Cardrona Hotel (made famous by Speight's beer ads). We made it through the mountains to Lake Wanaka in time for second breakfast. Most of the day was spent driving through the mountains to the west coast - along the shores of Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea and passing through the Gates of Haast. We stopped at Fantail Falls [View Full Entry]

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Heading south On Easter Saturday, after a suitable mountain breakfast of chocolate porridge with peaches. we set off heading South towards Queenstown. In the restaurant, the previous night we had been amused by some tourists asking the waitperson for directions from Tekapo to Queenstown. There is ONE road and it goes down and across a bit. There's a detour to Mount Cook, you ignore the turn off to Oamaru at Oamarama, ignore the turn off to Wanaka at Tarras and make sure you take the road to Alexandra at Cromwell [View Full Entry]

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On Good Friday, after a good breakfast of hot cross buns, we headed west out of Christchurch and joined the Inland Scenic Route 72 just past Darfield. This is a much nicer drive into the Southern Alps than the more direct routes. We were re-tracing our route taken over four years ago (Easter 2005) as chronicled in this very same blog. To that end, after passing through Rakaia Gorge, we detoured to Peel Forest in order to do the 'Big Tree Walk' - an amazing still native woodland, full of big trees (mainly giant Totara) and lots of fantastic NZ birdlife [View Full Entry]

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Feeling like we hadn't travelled anywhere for a while, we headed out one Saturday morning for a quick 1000km trip up to Nelson and back, driving anti-clockwise, up the coast, along the north coast of South Island and then back down through the mountains. After heading up SH1 with just a few quick stops (of course, that includes visiting the seals off the Kaikoura coast!) we drove along the Sounds and across to Havelock. After a walk on the Sounds we set off to cross the innocent-sounding Mount Richmond Forest Park... Here comes the interesting (fun) part...and I bla [View Full Entry]

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We used the annual Waitangi Day public holiday as an excuse to head out on the open road for three days (as if we need an excuse!). We left work as early as we could get away on Thursday night, left the big smoke and drove north up to Hanmer Springs, where we stayed the night in a backpackers. The idea was to get an early start on friday morning, crossing the Southern Alps via the Lewis Pass. We arrived at our destination Hokitika on the west coast on friday, having had a stunning drive punctuated by a few stops to [View Full Entry]

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