Neither of us were quite sure what to make of Queenstown. We'd been told by lots of people how nice it was, and the scenery certainly is pretty with the expansive lake (17x the surface area of Windermere), gorgeous autumnal trees and The Remarkables mountains towering above. The road into Queenstown is lined with motels, most with big glass windows to boast of the fireplaces and white leather sofas inside, and there were more shops bars and restaurants than any...

From Geraldine the road turned west and inland. The scenery changed to rolling hills of grey soil covered in tussocky yellow grass which looked much more beautiful than the description would have you believe. Almost in the centre of the South Island is Lake Tekapo. It is a huge turquoise lake which was incredibly still and offered lovely reflections of the surroundings. The colour of the lake was emphasised by the yellow, autumnal willow trees that lined part ...

Our second day of the campervan took us from peaceful Akaroa over the 'summit road' a very steep and twisty route over the hilltops high along the backbone of the Banks Peninsular. It offered spectacular views of the inlets and villages below but did make me feel a bit queasy :-S We stopped for lunch by Lake Ellesmere which was home to a vast array of black swans, shelducks and various other birds. The drive south from Christchurch took us past the bottom of M...

A lack of internet connections has meant we've been a bit lazy with our blog writing over the last week or so. We've written some short blogs about the places we've seen so far and this is the first. We picked up the van a little way out of Christchurch and set off for the Banks Peninsular to the east of Chch. It was a bit sad to leave the Jailhouse hostel as it felt pretty homely. Our new van is more of a people carrier, and it has an automatic gearbox which ...

ChCh Christchurch made world news in February 2011 when it was hit by a second devastating earthquake (the first of which was in 2010 and badly damaged buildings but no lives were lost). It destroyed the already fragile buildings and killed 185 people. We knew Christchurch was going to be an interesting place to stay but felt it was an important part of our Kiwi trip. The first evidence of the quake was a church propped up with girders that we saw from the airp...