Katy has a new interest. Forget skiing, forget snowboarding, forget (for the moment) skydiving and bungy jumping. Katy likes flying aeroplanes. No, not flying IN aeroplanes, but actually being at the controls and manoeuvring the plane around the sky. Before arriving in Wanaka, we had noticed a company called U Fly Wanaka offering an hour-long session, including 30 minutes actually in the air, for only NZ$195 (about £74). That sounded like a bargain and after a ...

"The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco," is a quote attributed to Mark Twain. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that he (or anyone else in fact) actually spoke or wrote these words, but if he had then they would surely apply just as well to New Zealand. When we arrived in Wanaka on Thursday, for example, it was beautifully sunny and hot. Today is Sunday and the weather is even better. For most of Friday and Saturday, however, it...

We were thinking of going to Milford Sound for a few days, but the weather was forecast to rain for two of them so we decided to postpone the visit until after New Year when the weather will hopefully be brighter. After consulting the map we opted to shelter from the rain in Invercargill, not a place we initially intended to go to, but we thought a town would be better than a muddy field when the heavens opened. Invercargill is near the most southern part of m...

We left Dunedin on Saturday 13th and took the Southern Scenic Route, which goes round the southeastern coast of the South Island. Around Balclutha, we decided to stop at the Stirling Cheese Factory - mainly just to break up the journey. We turned off the road to Stirling and found a sign to the factory so we followed it along an unmade, very bumpy road. We kept going and going and going. No sign of any cheese factory anywhere! It wasn't as if the place was a f...

Sprayed across the beach and nestled in the cliff just outside the town of Moeraki are big sphere-shaped rocks. The Moeraki Boulders as they are called in the guide book. You can access the beach via the café on top of the cliff, but at $2 each we opted for the free public car park and a 10-minute walk along the beach to the boulders. One rock half split open proved entertaining as a young couple took it in turns to perch inside, mimicking a chicken hatching f...