After the zoo, we drove up to the coastal town of Plimmerton (just north of Wellington) where we had arranged to stay four days at 'Moana Lodge'. The bad weather had returned but we met up with some other travellers in similar circumstances (Mike, Fran, Andy, Laura and Lisa) and later, Mark and Tanya (who we'd shared a flat with in Christchurch) turned up too. We spent a few days taking short walks and drives, but mostly watching LOTR films on video, playing Trivs (discarding the bizarre NZ-specific questions), shopping for a new digital camera and a top cheese, wine and art evening (organised by Lisa) where masterpieces were created with pastelly pencil crayons, waxy wax crayons and in some cases, improvised pieces of grape stalk and copious quantities of black crayon - psychologists are still ... read more

We drove back to Christchurch, stopping at Hanmer Springs for a night (enjoying an evening soak in fantastic geothermal hot water mineral pools) and taking a detour up through Arthur's Pass. In Christchurch, we've been seeing the sights we didn't see last time (botanic gardens, museum, art gallery, arts centre) and preparing for our trip up to North Island on Monday (train and ferry to Wellington). ... read more

We stayed at the cozy 'Shortbread Cottage' for a couple of nights in Nelson and met a nice bunch of people (including Graham and Kath, another travelling English pair). We wandered around the city including a visit to the jeweler who made 'The One Ring'. The weather was a bit mixed so in the afternoon we went to see 'The World of Wearable Art and Classic Cars' exhibition which as the name suggests is a collection of pieces of wearable art (past winners of the competition which is an annual NZ art extravaganza). Tagged on to this is a large room full of great cars including an old formula one car and a cute bubble car which we tried for size - yes, you guessed it - its tiny inside! Was everyone under 5ft in the ... read more

Leaving the south we spent a couple of days driving back up into the Southern Alps through some spectacular mountain passes. We seemed to stop every twenty minutes at viewpoints or to hike up to waterfalls, each more impressive that the previous but the highlight was hiking up to the terminal face of the Fox Glacier as well as seeing Franz Josef Glacier from "Sentinal Rock" (well worth the climb). Leaving the Alps we visited several goldmining towns (Okarito, Ross, Hokitika) and the splendidly reconstructed "Shantytown" (a collection of old buildings brought together to form a tourist attraction and historical monument). There we were also pleased to see our first Weka (a NZ ground bird). On saturday, we stopped at the "Pancake Rocks" at Punakaiki , walked on the cliffs at Cape Foulwind and stopped for ... read more

We spent two days in Manapouri so that we could visit two of New Zealand's famous Fiords. On Friday, we drove up to Milford Sound along a spectacular two-hour road into the wilderness. On Saturday, we took a cruise across Lake Manapouri, a 4x4 bus across a seriously rocky mountain pass and then spent the day on a catamaran on Doubtful Sound (so called, because when Captain Cook first set eyes on the fiord from the Tasman sea he refused to enter on the grounds that he was "doubtful" that he would ever manage to sail his ship out again). The highlight of our day was spotting a group of bottlenose dolphins as well as another, rarely seen, Albatross. That night we drove onto Queenstown...... read more