Ever heard of Lands End to John O’Groats? Mizen Head to Malin Head? Bluff to Cape Regina? They are all opposite ends of Britain, Ireland and New Zealand. I think you can also tell which one we are about to start. After leaving Milford Sound we hit the road for a long journey to Bluff. Along the way we stopped off at a town of 50,000 people called Invercargill. Not the prettiest place in New Zealand. We didn’t stop for long and after using Starbucks for their free wi-fi and doing our weekly shopping at Pac n Save we hit the road again. Bluff also is not that nice either and we were disappointed when we found out its not actually the southern most tip of New Zealand. Slope point a few kilometres east is actually ... read more

Weather and a traffic accident would mean that we didn’t get to make it to Milford Sound. When we were having breakfast we heard sirens going of twice. We thought that maybe it signalled an avalanche or rock slide so while I was emptying the dirty water out of Ted, Michelle went to the office as to what the sirens meant. When she returned she said she had bad news. The sirens are a calling system for the fire brigade and emergency rescue personnel. A bus had crashed on the Milford road and it would be closed off until 12pm at the earliest. It was 8:55am and we felt pretty deflated as we were really looking forward to seeing Milford Sound. Then an idea entered my head that we could go and see the Doubtful Sound. ... read more

The last time we decided to do a bungy jump it was my idea. That was March 2008 in Thailand. This time it was Michelle’s idea. Since the last jump I had developed a bit of a fear for heights, even though I enjoyed the bungy in Phuket. Michelle had wanted to do the canyon swing in Queenstown even before we left Ireland. As we could get a package for both a bungy and canyon swing we thought why not. The canyon swing will be explained in the next blog and for now I’ll describe the bungy. We left the office of AJ Hackett and drove for 40mins to the canyon where we would do our bungy jump. Everyone on the bus was a little tense and talking about who would jump first. Something told me ... read more

We left the north east coast of New Zealand and travelled across the Lewis Pass to the west coast. Its approximately a six hour journey across and we did it in two stints, three hours each day. The second day it rained all the way so we didn’t get to appreciate the scenery we had been told that we would see on the way. We did make a small detour to an old abandoned gold mining village on the way. It was abandoned literally over night when a shaft collapsed and the mine became unusable. It had an eerie feel even though most of the town was gone or covered over by trees and bushes. When we got to Greymouth we did some shopping for the week. When we got back to the van we didn’t ... read more

The ferry crossing to the south island was a bit mixed. When we woke up that morning I said to Michelle that the ferry hadn’t a hope of going the weather was that wet and wild. We left our campsite at 6am and drove for 20 minutes to the check-in point. Other cars and camper vans were queuing so we had some hope. Soon we were on the boat and the weather had cleared a little bit. As we left the port you could see the waves were choppy. Soon we were out at sea and the boat was bouncing up and down and from left to right. I thought I wouldn’t be bothered by the motion of the boat but we both started to feel sea sick. Most of the people on the boat were ... read more