Had a bit of a lie in this morning did get going till around 9.30am, we are travelling about three hours to Dunedin today. We took a short detour to Nugget Point on the way which is famous for its seals. After an 8km drive along a dirt road and a 15 minute walk along the cliff face we arrived at the light house, at first we could see very little but after a while we began picking out seals basking in the sun and playing in the tidal pools. We could hear the pups squeaking and barking, it was unusual because there were three different species of seal including some really big Eliphant Seals which is why we went there. We stayed there much longer than we expected it was truly an amazing sight. On ... read more

Its another beautiful day in NZ, we munched our cereal and headed about 7km out of town to the Shotover River for a go at the Jetboats, we put on the plastic cover all and our life jackets and stood in the sun for ten minutes or so roasting. We ended up in the middle of the boat which seemed the best spot to sit to avoid being drenched then after a few minutes we were off, and man what a ride. Sliding up against the walls of the gorges, bumping over sand banks and bouncing over rapids was exhilarating but it was the spins that were brilliant. I think it only went for about half an hour, the 360 degree spins were incredible and this must be one of the highlights of the trip. We ... read more

Our first stop to day is Punakaika about 40km north of Greymouth, there is a short board walk along the coast here that allows access to some pretty interesting and unusual limestone formations. The rocks have a layered affect hence their name Pancake Rocks, there are also some impressive blow holes but we missed the tide so missed the show, but it was a beautiful place and very photogenic ofcourse. It took about 2 hours to get to our cabin Whataroa where we dumped our bags and headed to an information kiosk to book ourselves on a Helicopter Hike on the top of Fox Glacier. We then headed to Franz Joseph the "town" that services the Glacier tourists before taking a walk to the ice face, we decided not to get to close as I didnt ... read more

350 km to Wellywood at least thats what they call Wellington now days, Lord of the rings and all that. About 10km out of new Plymouth we stopped briefly at Lake Mangamahoe to feed chocolate biscuits to the ducks and to take a few shots of Mt Taranaki its quite an impressive sight. The volcano is 2518m high and has been dormant for about thyree centuries and is due to explode some day soon. After a few more hours driving we stopped at a small place called Shannon to visit 'Owlcatraz', it was as eccentric as it sounded and a bit cheesey too. We did see Owl Capone and Owl Mcpherson (you see what I mean) before heading down the back to look at blind pigs and huge cows, still it was a chance to stretch ... read more

Taupo is only a short drive from Rotorua but we stopped a couple of times along the way, firstly at Waiotapu, where there is a great geyser (Lady Knox Geyser) that erupts once a day with a little assistance from some soap suds poured down the hole on top. We also discovered Kerosene lake which is the best hot spring and some amazing mud pools that were accessed for free and surpassed anything we had previously paid for. The rest of thermal park was pretty good as well, took a few hours to walk around but was well worth the effort. Next stop was Orakei Koraka which was rated highly by Lonely Planet, why I dont know, it was expensive and not as good as what we had seen earlier in the day, still it was ... read more