We left a very sunny Napier and made the drive of a few hours to Taupo, stopping off for a peppermint tea and bacon sarnie (All made in A** Hole of course - I love living in a camper!!) at Huka falls which were very beautiful. From here we went to the Craters of the Moon Geothermal park but the rain started lashing it down so having bought a ticket and being allowed to come back the next day we set off in search of a 'spacestation' to swap some of our dvd's. This is the bit where I will hand [View Full Entry]

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We left Golden Bay and prepared ourselves for the twisty turny two hour drive to get back on the main drag to Nelson, I am such a rubbish passenger especially on hairpin bends!!!! We stopped off in Nelson for a mooch about, nothing that exciting there really so we moved on to Havelock for lunch, capital of the Green Lipped mussels and boy were they good!!! From here we went for a bit of a drive through Marlborough sound which was beautiful but as time was ticking away we made a dash to Blenheim and then onto the much raved about [View Full Entry]

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We left Murchison quite early and headed to Motueka to stock up on provisions for the next few days, making sure we raided a deli of at least five different cheeses before we left! We had been told of a really sweet place to stay right on the edge of Abel Tasman NP so after stopping off at a gorgeous bay for some lunch we made our way round the windy roads to the Barn and spent the afternoon getting to know our NEIGHbours over a few beers! The Abel Tasman is the smallest Nat Park in all of NZ but [View Full Entry]

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We were looking to Shantytown to deliver something pretty great to lift our spirits but on closer inspection discovered it was New Zealand’s Black Country Museum so gave it a miss. Morale was pretty low (how sad are we but I so wanted to go to Glastonbury again!) and even the biggest muffin ever couldn’t cheer me up - especially when I bit into it! We saw one of the brown attraction signs saying Pancake Rocks and Blowholes so decided to pull over and have a look. It was brilliant, there was a lovely walk through a fern lined boardwalk and [View Full Entry]

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The road to Franz Josef was pretty cool and we arrived just as the mist and the rain set in. The one difference between here and home is they actually know what the weather is doing so we were advised to wait it out for a day until the skies cleared. This basically involved a lot of brandy and backgammon! We did manage to nip out in the rain for a hot chocolate and a muffin and then we were very kindly given a free hot tub for an hour courtesy of spaceships - just what you need when every part [View Full Entry]

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We left very early to start the journey to Milford Sound, unfortunately in the rush, a tragedy occurred, Ted, the turtle that I bought as a replacement for Barclay must have dropped out of the van and his final resting place was Te Anau - bye Ted. Luckily Tel decided to drive and I was very grateful, its basically a twisty turny road round hairpin bends and tunnels through the southern Alps, amazing but also nauseating in a car! We made it just in time to get the afternoon boat and were talked into buying the special winter package of barbeque [View Full Entry]

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So, we left a very hot Australia behind and headed even further away from home towards Auckland. We had been wanting to do a flight over the great barrier reef but when we went out to the reef from Airlie the helicopter had crashed (joy!) so it was out of action, but as we took off from Cairns we had the most amazing view of the barrier reef and we flew over it for nearly an hour, so we managed to get our trip over it one way or another! We arrived in Auckland at about 7 at night, it was [View Full Entry]

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It’s quite weird sitting typing this as I have got so behind, we are nearly half way through our time in south island, I’m about a month behind with this as we have been moving around so much and it’s too cold to have the window open for the power lead for the computer - what a hard life I hear you say!! Anyway, back to Australia…….. We left Airlie by about 8.30 and after a quick stop at a little town to raid the delicatessen we made our way to the much acclaimed Mission Beach. Loads of people had said [View Full Entry]

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It was a 4 hour drive from cape Hillsborough to Airlie and we had heard some not so great things about the place. When we arrived we found the closest caravan park to the city and secured ourself an overpriced pitch right by the main road - joy!! Of all the parks we have stayed in, Airlie was the most expensive and the worst facilities, but it has the draw of the Whitsunday so it gets away with it pretty easily. After spending a morning catching up on a few blogs (they take an age!!) we then spent an afternoon lying [View Full Entry]

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We left Yeppoon and ended up in Emerald by about 2.30. On the page of the map i was looking at it looked as if we were about a quarter of the way across Australia but when looking at the big map we were only about 10%, Australia really is a massive country! We arrived in Emerald and it was absolutely boiling, instead of over heating in Clyde we decided to try go into Sapphire and RubyVale and try and get me a sapphire nose stud made, We were too lazy to actually fossick for the stones so bought a very [View Full Entry]

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