Immigration in Sydney was not anywhere near as tedious or drawn out as it had been in New Zealand nor as arduous as we had been warned. After New Zealand I had a print out of my visa, proof of departure and everything all ready for inspection none of which was asked of me. We settled ourselves into an airport shuttle since the airport didn't have any useful bus services and then spent 20 minutes for the driver trying to fill the last 2 seats. In these 20 minutes ...

We checked out a little after 10am, paid for the extortionate car park next door and set off on our way for Dunedin, although significantly down on junk food given an absence of any conveniently located supermarket or newsagent.The second largest city on the South Island and the fifth overall, Dunedin was founded by The Free Church of Scotland as the principal town of its free church settlement. It is for this reason that the city is named Dunedin, coming from th...

The next morning we were more than hungover (surprisingly!) We were redefining hungover! But we had to check out by 10am. We packed up the car stocked up with even more junk food and set off for Queenstown. But 2 hours later, I was falling asleep and Lucy was finding it hard to concentrate on the road or very much else and we pulled into a picnic spot, reclined the chairs as far as they would go and took a nap .. for 2 hours. Queenstown Base, lacking a car park,...

It was an early start the next day, needing to layer up and prepare our packed lunches for the trek ahead. We met at the the trek centre at 8:15am, checked in, signed our release forms and were given our over-trousers, jackets, hat, gloves, boots, socks and crampons, which we quickly (Although somewhat laboriously) put on and climbed on into the bus that would take us to the glacier. It was a short and scenic drive to the glacier and a 10 minute walk through a sm...

DRIVING DAYS - Picton to Nelson to Franz JosefWhen we awoke (for Lucy had also fallen asleep on the ferry crossing) we were in the little town of Picton on the South Island (the better island if backpackers were to be believed) and with a whole new array of dangerous activities for us to indulge in. We waited patiently at baggage reclaim and watched as the carousel went around and around and around consistently lacking our backpacks - of course ours would be amon...