As we were bringing our trip to a close, we had planned a stay in the Cook Islands which is a group of Islands in the South Pacific on the way from NZ to the US. This was to be a real break from the backpacking lifestyle we had been through and was a full on beach holiday. We had lined up 10 days stay, which I was looking forward to at this point. Surely, what could go wrong with miles of beaches, great diving and loads of sun?The coolest thing was that in orde...

We left Franz Josef after only 1 night; I enjoyed my trip up the glacier but that is all there is to do and there is no point staying there any longer there and headed up the coast on our way back to Christchurch. This stretch of the journey had a sense of Déjà vu as we had been on a lot of this route while in the campervan.If I'm honest, it is probably the worst part of New Zealand to consider going to twice! The whole of the west coast is fairly inhospitable ...

Our last day in Queenstown we took a trip to Milford Sound. This is one of the most famous sights in New Zealand. Milford Sounds is actually a Fjord and was formed by a glacier thousands of years ago. It is in the middle of nowhere, even more isolated then most things in NZ and to get there takes a long coach journey. We left Queenstown at 7am and headed off through the countryside of an area known as Fiordland. (Full of fjords unsurprisingly, the kiwi's are near...

As this blog is mainly about Queenstown and goes on for a bit, I will skip a few places from our journey there. Basically, we went to: Arthurs Pass; Geraldine, Lake Tekapo, Akaroa and finally Dunedin. Dunedin rained a lot, but we went to the Cadburys factory and the Speights brewery for tours which were fun. We put the photos up in there own section with proper explanations if you are interested. After 3 days in Dunedin, we headed off to Queenstown, which I was...

Into the South We had now left the North Island and were on the ferry across to the south island. Unsurprisingly, this was just like getting the ferry to Ireland, except that it's a much rougher crossing. They actually have a warning sign at the entry to the terminal as to what condition the seas are, we had a calm crossing which was true for most of the journey as the ferry is sheltered by the islands, however once you get out into Cook Strait itself, the boat ...