Trying to catch up with blog here are the last days in New Zealand... soon to being...SOUTH AMERICA!!! Day47 20th October - Lake Taupo Lake Taupo is New Zealand’s largest lake, at 606-sq km, also recognized as the trout fishing capital of the world (pointless information but hey!). We just had our usual chilled type of day, coffee and walking around. Day 48 21st October - Lake Taupo Today we went to visit the “Huka Falls” the Maori call it the Hukanui meaning Great Body of Spray. The power of the water at the falls is spectacular and a bit scary [View Full Entry]

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Day 40 13th October - Greymouth to Nelson. This morning we left a very grey and cloudy Greymouth and started making our way up towards Nelson along the surf-pounded Tasman Sea coastline. It’s one of the planets 10 best road trips according to the Lonely Planet Blue List! Our first stop was Punakaiki & the famous Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. The limestone has formed into what looks like piles of thick pancakes & if caught at the right time of day the sea surges into caverns and booms menacingly through blowholes. We continued North and took a slight detour off the [View Full Entry]

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Day 39 12th October - Franz Josef Glaciers Heli-Hike, Skydive, Lake Matterson & finally onto Greymouth. Today was one hell of an action filled day! We woke up really early and made our way to the Heli-hike office, from there we were weighed and then we crossed over the road to a little shack to get our boots and special coats on. After a quick word or two regarding safety, we were split us into three groups (we were group number 2), each group got on to their helicopters and made there way over to the Glacier. The helicopter ride was [View Full Entry]

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Day 34 7th October- Te Anau to Queenstown Seeing as we’d seen both Milford & Doubtful Sound, we thought we’d push on to Queenstown, the adrenaline capital of New Zealand! It was a beautiful, sunny day so we thought it best to take advantage of the good weather & take the Skyline Gondola affording us fantastic views of Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding mountains. We had an hour or so to explore & get some pictures before watching a Maori culture show, giving us a small insight into Maori life & a chance to see the famous Haka up close. [View Full Entry]

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Day 32, 5th October - Milford Sound Up bright & early and straight to the Vistors Centre after having breakfast to check road conditions down to Milford. After a quick stop to buy some gloves (it was freakin freezing!) we set off and made our first stop at “Mirror Lake” to get a nice reflection of the snow capped mountains. One problem though…There was no reflection! Actually there was no lake, it looked more like an oversized puddle!! We continued (slightly disappointed) towards Milford and stopped next at ‘The Divide” where we trekked up to “Kea Summit&r [View Full Entry]

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Day 31 4th October - Catlins to Te Anau via Bluff (Scenic Coastal Highway) After a very wet, windy & rather sleepless night we set off for Te Anau which is the gateway to both Milford & Doubtful Sound. We made a detour on route to Bluff, which is a pretty unimpressive little port town, but we wanted to get our pictures with the Stirling Point Signpost, to prove that we’d managed to travel the entire length of NZ - From Cape Regina to Bluff! We then continued our journey West passing through a quiet little town called Riverton & discovered [View Full Entry]

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Day 28 1st October - Dunedin This morning we jumped on the bus into the City Centre and made our way to the Cadbury’s Factory - Yes the Chocolate one!!  Unfortunately there were no Umpalumpas much to Steve’s and my disappointment, made even worse when the children were given big chocolate Easter eggs and not us!!! We did get free chocolate though and the smell inside the factory is delicious!!! We also saw one of the world’s largest chocolate waterfalls which to our disappointed is only there for the entertainment of the people doing the tours. From Chocolate to c [View Full Entry]

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Day 11 15th September- Colvile Farm to Whitianga Unfortunately today we had to leave the farm and move on in our trip as there is so much to see and not enough time! We started of by stopping at the little store in Colvile (very little store) to stock up on milk, butter and bread. We then started driving off to the far north of the Coromandel Peninsula; the drive was amazing all pretty much unsealed road untouched coastline of turquoise color! We then drove back through Colville back down to Coromandel town and on towards Whitianga arriving in Whitianga we [View Full Entry]

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New Zealand: On the 31st of August we boarded the plane from Sydney to Auckland. As the plane was about to land my face was stuck to the window, the scenery outside didn’t look real everything was so neat and pretty! We arrived in Auckland and took a bus to the city centre; from there we walked to our apartment which was a much longer walk than we had anticipated! We arrived at the apartment then went to do some grocery shopping (once again the walk was much longer then we thought it would be!), we then cooked dinner and went [View Full Entry]

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Australia: We arrived in Brisbane on the 8th of August, stepping out of the airport we were so happy to feel refreshing cool air, it was such a nice change from the stuffing heat we had gotten used to in Asia! We stayed in Brisbane for 3 days relaxing and walking around the city, we then hired a car for 5 days (a cabriolet) to drive along the coast, our plan was to go to Fraser Island, but we spent too long exploring the coast on the first day driving up to Hervey Bay and we were too late to organize [View Full Entry]

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