Well after 8 weeks of travelling this great country we are looking at the last 5 days hanging around Christchurch but there are still places I want to tell you about that we have seen since our last blog update.

LAKE TEKAPO, ALEXANDRA, CROMWELL AND OF COURSE MT COOK

When we left Dunedin we headed inland through Middlemarch to Alexandra. We were absolutely delighted to see the clock in the hill. It's a fully operational clock mounted in the hill that overlooks Alexandra (see the photo in the gallery). We then drive up along the lake - and what a lake! - we crossed the river into Cromwell while there was a classic car exhibition on. Some of the cars were amazing and there were thousands of them. That night we camped beside Lake Dunstall. It was a fantastic spot!

On Sunday 18th January we drove on upward to Omorama, Twizel and on to Mt Cook. The drive was full of fantastic scenery and as we travelled up to Mt Cook we followed the lake - it was the bluest we have seen - and the photo above is what we saw as we drove there. Isn't it absolutely fantastic. At Mt Cook we walked to the summit of a small hill to see the end of the Tasman Glacier and were able to see the bit of the Glacier that had broken off and was floating in the lake.

We drove back out from Mt Cook to Lake Tekapo - another massive light blue lake. The colour comes from the melting snow off the surrounding mountains with all the minerals in the sands that are washed off the slopes. That night we camped behind a pub in Fairlie.....we think it was the same one that Heather and Mike, my sister and brother in law, stayed there on their visit to NZ.

CANTERBURY, MURCHISON AND MARLBOROUGH

The Canterbury area has some fabulous little towns like Winchester, Methven (where the most recent earthquake was centred) and Timaru. In Methvan there was a Brown Pub and a Blue Pub (both so named) - see the photos. We passed through Mt Hutt and the Arakia Gorge and the Maruia Falls. We had our next stopover at Murchison, a town steeped in gold history. From here we took the Mrborough wine trail and saw an amazing lot of vineyeard where they grow their famous whites. We were of course heading back to the east coast. While at Omau we were up close and personal with a huge Fur Seal colony. I say this because Tony was in the process of tking a photo when he nearly stepped on one of the seals. It let him know in no uncertain terms that he was in his territory. You should have seen Tony move!

As we travelled back towards Christchurch we took the tourist route and saw the Cathedral rocks (see the album). Yesterday we drove out to Akaroa. WOW! what a fabulous place. The town has been very much influenced by the French and while we were there P & Os Diamond Princess was anchored in the bay. We were having lunch and shared a tabl with a couple form Bunbury who knew Tony from his Donnybrook days. They were on the ship cruising back to Australia.

Anyway, that's about it from NZ. We have the most fantastic time and covered many thousands of kilometres. We think we have really done NZ well and have heap of memories of this fabulous time.

Next instalment will be from OZ.