March 3rd - 9th 2011 Twizel I'm not sure what to write about Twizel. It was a nice enough place for a town built to service the dam construction project (Waitaki Hydro Scheme, several lakes created, eight power stations). We stopped at a camp ground for the usual shower and laundry. It was one of the coldest nights we have camped out on this trip so far. And thats about all we saw / did there. When we were in the i-site we overheard someone saying it was raining up at Aoraki Mt Cook and the road was about to be closed due to high winds, but that tomorrow was forecast to be much better. Good, we were heading there the next day. We had noticed that the wind was strong. We'd been driving (very slowly) ... read more

The above panorama is of Porpoise Bay, somewhere in there are some Hectors Dolphins. February 20th - 25th 2011 Stewart Island Well, the kiwi were as elusive as the kea, not that we were really surprised. We had a good time on Stewart Island, but it wasn't as good as we expected. I think it was the weather more than anything, it's hard to do much outside in the rain! Rain apparently falls on Stewart Island, or Rakiura, about 265 days a year. Halfmoon Bay gets about 1600mm, and the south and west of the island can get up to 5000mm a year. No wonder the island is covered with lush rainforest! The Maori name for the island, Rakiura, came about when Te Rakitamau, the second son of Tukekawa crossed Te Ara a Kewa, or Foveaux ... read more

The above panorama is from Jackson Bay looking back towards Haast 7th February - 13th February 2011 Its been hard getting motivated to write these blogs at the moment. Its not like we aren't doing anything – we are busy every day. Its just that travelling round our own country is so different than travelling somewhere else, somewhere different, that we don't really feel like we are on holiday. We certainly don't feel like tourists (though we don't like to think of ourselves as tourists wherever we go) as here we speak the same language, drive the same, use the same money (no need to worry about foreign currency transaction charges), the shops are the same, the food is the same. We are far from bored, we are loving the time away with Samara, loving exploring ... read more

Sunday 30th January – Thursday February 3rd 2011 I am sitting here trying to be inspired by the view out the window of our current couch surf. Or the view that was outside this window this morning as this evening the cloud has descended and the rain is about to start. We are staying with a wonderful family just south of Ross and they have views of snow covered Mt Cook and Mt Tasman, plus other mountains. So in between flashes of lightning I will backtrack and reminisce about the past few days. I promise not to wax lyrical or anything! Besides, its been a quiet week. Our last blog left you in Greymouth where we did some domestic stuff (laundry, grocery shopping, topping up the water tanks). Our next destination was Lake Brunner, 40km or ... read more

Saturday 22nd January – Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lewis Pass From Hanmer Springs we headed to the west coast – better weather was forecast for the next few days than on the east coast so we thought we'd take advantage of it. Besides, there were places we wanted to see and things we wanted to do. The road took us over the Lewis Pass. We wound our way up a while, checking the map and the settlement names as we'd been told about some free hot springs along the way. We found the parking spot by the river and the warm pool easy enough – and the infamous sand-flies found us. We'd barely stopped and the little biters were all over us (not fun when trying to feed a baby). The water wasn't warm enough or ... read more