We left Abel Tasman fairly early Wednesday morning (as we knew it would be a longish drive to Blenheim) and we weren’t too sure as to which route we wanted to take to get there. We had had a brilliant time in Abel Tasman (and we had the sand fly bites to prove it), and it looked like we were leaving at the right time, as we could see a big bank of clouds heading in our direction. So it was back on the twisty, yet scenic drive out of Abel Tasman National Park. It was a fairly plain drive until we hit the Marlborough region and then the scenery changed. It felt a bit like the Cape area with the vineyards stretching for miles and with mountains forming the background, it was beautiful. There is ... read more

When we left Franz Josef we had a rough plan of camping for a night in a little town called Murchison and then heading to Abel Tasman National Park the next day. We reached Murchison a little after lunch time and decided to push on for a while longer to give ourselves a shorter drive the next day and more time in Abel Tasman. We ended up stopping about 2 hrs later in a town called Motueka. The campsite was pleasant and we enjoyed using the hot spa especially after driving for as long as we did. Motueka is virtually at the southern end of Abel Tasman National Park but we had decided to go up to the Northern end of the park where there is a big campground. From the looks of it though, Motueka ... read more

We arrived at Te Anau on Friday around lunchtime not really knowing what to expect. We had driven through some hard rain and our fingers were crossed hoping we had left the rain behind. Our campsite was located just off Lake Te Anau and with the mountains - the start of the Fjordland mountains in the background it was like a perfect postcard setting. Lake Te Anau is a glacier formed lake and the second largest in New Zealand with its deepest point being 417m!! It was not the turquoise blue we had become accustomed to, but beautiful nonetheless. After setting up our tent we decided to take a walk into town (town being a single street with a few tourist shops). We strolled along the lake shore, appreciating our surroundings as we walked. We went ... read more

We left Mount Cook with a spring in our step. Our time there had been great and we were really looking forward to getting to Dunedin. Dunedin is old Gaelic for Edinburgh and the impression we had from the guide books was that Dunedin is a little piece of Scotland in the South. It was about 3 and a half hours to Dunedin and our first stop was at the Moerikai Boulders. These are big, round boulders sitting in the middle of beach. It is quite an unusual sight seeing these almost perfectly round rocks sitting on the beach, they seem so out of place. If you are feeling left out of all of this you can have a similar sort of experience, just get some pebbles or marbles, put them in some watery sand and ... read more

Our flight from Fiji was good. Once again we were impressed with Air New Zealand. The highlight of our flight was the food. We had fish cakes! Why fish cakes I hear you ask. Easy, they run out of pie before they got to us. We managed to eat it but Sandra was utterly devastated when pudding turned out to be a little, dry chocolate brownie instead of the gloriously sumptuous ice-cream cone she had become accustomed to. We arrived in Auckland at about 22:30 but only got to the hotel at about midnight as we got delayed going through quarantine. It turns out that if you have a tent and are trying to enter New Zealand, you are automatically subjected to additional quarantine inspections. They asked for our tent, gave us a little receipt for ... read more