A comfortable stay in a cafe with pitches last night, where a wood burner and a cooked meal helped to distract us from the lashings of rain and high winds. Temperatures have dropped dramatically and have certainly worn all my warm clothing and in some cases all at once ! We moved north again but this weather is all over nz for the moment. A lovely drive crossing and recrossing the Buller river. We wished we had maintained a note of all the river and creek cro...

Running north in front of a storm which followed us up the coast to this place which is something of an institution hereabouts. Real NZ hill country. Had hoped to go rafting through the caves to see glow worms as recommended by Owain and Cerys but too much water going through sadly. Similarly a helicopter flight had to be called off first thing because of fog. Hey ho - the scenery is still lovely so we continue to go up the coast. Curiously though we had no prob...

Andrew having a birthday pint while Wales plays Korea in the rugby sevens in Hong Kong on the tv screens.

We left our overnight stop before dawn (6.45) to get some kilometres covered, know it sounds elderly but happier putting the miles in during the first part of the day. Roads were quiet of course and we made good time. The weather soon closed in and in Birthday mood the driver stopped to pick up two hitchhikers, one from France ( an organic vegetable grower) and his girl friend a nurse from Zurich. The girl friend had been in NZ for a month and him since Januar...

Awoke to a glorious morning after yesterday’s downpour. Told by the locals that the waterfalls we’d seen yesterday only last two hours or so and sure enough this morning they’d pretty much all gone - we were very fortunate to have seen Milford in all it’s wet glory yesterday and in it’s sunny glory this morning. Out on the water first thing as we had a site on the only camper van site at Milford, plots effectively in the rain forest. We did a couple of...