If there is a more attractive car ferry route, I don’t know it. As the ship winds its way through the Queen Charlotte and Tory sounds finally crossing the Cook Straits into the harbour at Wellington. Arriving late in the day we overnighted at a campsite outside the city. Keen to move north we just spent the morning in Wellington to see the Te Papa museum. It is dedicated to New Zealand culture and heritage. It told stories of the early settlers both Maori, European and other migrants. A machine allowed you to see whether you would be able to stay in the country regarding your age, education, vocation, etc the machine rejected both of us, looks like we’re staying in Britain! Two other notable exhibits were the Gallipoli exhibit which was well put together including ... read more

We’d had lovely journey on our first week in New Zealand, passed lovely scenery and explored towns but things were getting a bit…safe. Queenstown our next stop, is a busy small town on the north side of Lake Wakatipu, has made its name as a centre for extreme sports. The first ever commercial bungee jump was made at the nearby Kawarau bridge. If you are willing to spend some dollars, you can go skydiving, white water rafting, canyoning, rock climbing amongst many other activities. Our eye was taken by a large poster showing the Shotover Jet boat. 50 years ago an entrepreneur had the idea to take people on boat rides up the aptly named Shotover River on a then newly designed Jet boat. After some research, if you are going to separate yourself with your ... read more

Oops, We’d only had the hire camper 24hrs and already broke it. Another car flashed us and I looked in the mirror only to see the power chord trailing along the road minus the connector. We were looking forward to flying into New Zealand. After months of trains and buses we were excited to have our own transport, a Toyota HiAce camper. We pre-booked this in the UK and because of the good price we received, didn’t expect too much. But it turned out to be newer and more spacious than we expected. As we were in Christchurch, a major NZ city we chose a campsite just a bus ride away from the city centre. Back in 2011, Christchurch suffered a major earthquake which killed a 185 people. I remember seeing the reports on the news ... read more

One of our whole trip essentials was to book some kind of sailing trip around the Whitsundays, a group of islands off the East Coast, nearest mainland town Airlie Beach. There were many trips on offer, much as we’d like to have chartered our own boat we were not brave enough as we don’t have the much needed local knowledge, and little time to gain any, we’d probably have ended up on one of the many sand bars. So we decided to use the opportunity to seek out a racing yacht for an exhilarating experience. We found ourselves with 22 young people (including 18 girls), on Condor an 80 ft champion yacht, who’s wins include 2 Fastnet races. None of the other passengers had sailed before and we only had the captain and 2 crew so ... read more

The British Airways 777 flight from Singapore to Sydney was like a little slice of home far above the Java sea. Can somebody tell me if there is an etiquette regarding the reclining seats during a flight? It seemed like only a few minutes after we took off and before the substantial in-flight food and drinks, that the person in front of me flipped the lever, and either I was to be too cramped or I was to be part of the great domino effect through the cabin. We landed at Sydney airport early in the morning. There was a risk that my Ukulele was to be confiscated as we had been advised twice, once by the flight's purser, that there are rules regarding bringing wood into the country-I’m pleased to say it lives on to ... read more