Gemma and Stephen

We arrived back into Kathmandu exhausted, our bus journey from Ramachapp felt neverending. The roads either had no tarmac or tarmac that was barely there. Those that did were in such a bad state of repair that we jumped two feet in the air every time we hit a pothole. I was travel sick, which was a combination of the bumpy roads, and lack of food and water for about 7 hours. Needless to say all we wanted to do when we finally arrived in Kathmandu was go to sleep. Our hotel, Ganesh Himah didn't have any room for us so we were put up in a 'sister' hotel. But just when we thought that things couldn't get any worse we found to our dismay that the matresses on the beds were an inch thick, it ... read more

Well, our last few days in New Zealand involved a lot of realaxing which was great as we have had a pretty jammed packed time since arriving six weeks ago. We spent three nights in Kaikoura doing some last minute shopping, treating ourselves to a feast at the fish'n'chip shop, catching up on some time in front of the TV as well as wandering along the coast & looking at the many fur seals catching some Z's. A quick drive south landed us in Christchurch and it was within the hour that we felt our first aftershock from the recent earthquake. A 5.1 on the ricter scale had our campervan shaking and moving..... (Needless to say, Ste grabbed the wine and jumped out the door - leaving Gemma to fend for herslelf. Priorities!!!) We spent our ... read more

Having cut Queenstown short by a day or two due to the race against the changing weather we made the drive to Te Anau where we stayed the night at a beautiful lakeside campsite. The next day our Milford adventure started. We had booked ourselves on an overnight cruise on the sound, being early on in the summer season we got a discount, so our cruise only cost us $133 each. Not bad for a nights accomodation, a slap up evening meal, a full cooked breakfast and kayaking to boot. Anyway, first was the drive to Milford itself which is stunning, 120km's through the Fiordland National Park. On the road we stopped at the mirror lakes which gave us some great reflections of the mountains, although our mirror image was slightly distorted by a few cheeky ... read more

Leaving Nelson early the following day and making our way south along the west coast, it became clear that the weather was turning for the worse. Not surprising really as the west coast of the south island is notoriously unpreditacble. Greymouth would be as far as we would drive today with a few quick stop offs at Buller Gorge (The longest swinbridge in New Zealand at 100m's long), Cape Foulwind (the location of a large fur seal colony) and Punakaiki (The very unique 'Pancake Rocks' - aptly named as they look like stacks of pancakes). After a night in Greymouth we travelled further south again to The Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers where we would be doing our glacier hike. Our first two nights were spent in the very quaint and peaceful Fox Glacier village, but, ... read more

It was an absolutely exhilarating day of hiking with pristine scenery, dizzying heights and fresh white snow that squeaked beneath our feet as we made our way across one of the world’s most renowned day hikes. We had an early start of 5am and after being kitted out in all our required hiking gear, we began what was to become a highlight of our New Zealand trip so far. With it still being the winter season this trek could only be done as part of an organised group and having previously being cancelled for three straight weeks as a result of awful weather conditions; we were blessed with the spectacular day we had. Incredibly the days following were cancelled too, so we had this one day window which we took with open arms. At 8am we ... read more