Even just flying in to Christchurch and looking out of the window you could see that this place was beautiful. When we landed it was a balmy 20 degrees and we were freezing, straight away out came the musty jumpers and trousers that had barely seen the light of day for the last few months and it was still cold! Our theory is its preparing us for our homecoming in March. Anyways Christchurch is a beautiful city, really clean, quite spacious and just a nice place to be. We visited the square and watched people play giant chess and we were lucky enough to see the famous wizard climb his ladder and rant about the wrongs of the world and why we should all believe in fairies! Anyways we only had 1 full day here and we decided to spend it at the Antarctic centre, which was really cool. You got to see the penguins, and learn all about the different wildlife and research that goes on over there. But the highlight had to be the cold room, where you go in at a moderate -8 degrees and have a play about in the snow, go in the igloo and slide down the ice slide, but they also turn it into a blizzard. So we all huddled together as they blasted us with winds of up to 40kmph and temperatures of -18 degrees and my god is the COLD!
The following day was a long anticipated day, when we got our beloved campervan. And it was brilliant we now have the freedom to go wherever we want and at our own pace, plus no more lugging the rucksack around! Our first drive headed down towards Dunedin and the Otago Peninsular, where we got to see some Albatross (the most amazing bird in the world...they were truly incredible) and the yellow eyed penguins which were also cool (we got really close to one chick)
After 2 nights there we shot off the Te Anau and the milford sound, we did a glow worm cave tour which was beautiful, the looked like stars and your on this boat in the pitch black hoping you wont fall out! An then it was the drive to the sound, which was the best scenery i think I've seen anywhere, just incredible, the mountains and the clouds, you don't think it can get any better and the around each corner there's another even more incredible view.
2 nights again was all we could afford there before we headed up to the adrenaline capital Queenstown. Si did a jump at the worlds first ever bungy jump and i don't know who was more nervous. I was waaaaay too chicken and just watched from a safe distance! And we went to a bird sanctuary and saw a kiwi, its such a strange little creature. Finally we did the Luge, oh my god i never had so much fun! You get this little go kart type thing and have to negotiate all the way down this hill with tunnels and banked corners...awesome!
After 3 days it was off the The Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers. And they again were incredible (is there anything about this country that is not beautiful or amazing!) we had a bit of a look at Franz Josef and hiked on Fox. First we had to climb through a really humid rainforest that was odd, right on the side of a moving river of ice! But when we got out there it was bloody cold, but incredible, also completely different from when I did it before. But we got to see blue ice, and all the different formations and our guide was very educational. However it was short lived and off we were again, this time to Hanmer springs where we spent a luxurious afternoon lounging in the spa pools (which got up to 41 degrees, which is warm when its 30 degree heat outside too!) but it was well deserved as its a lonnnnng way to drive around NZ (poor Si!), it looks small compared with Australia next door but trust me distances are deceptive!
Our final two destinations on the south island were Kaikoura and Blenheim. First Kaikoura where we got to go whale watching and it was for lack of a better word incredible...infact comes close to one of the best things we've done so far this trip! We got so close to the Sperm whales, you could see them spurting water and replenishing their air supplies before diving back down for 40 minutes and giving us some brilliant views of his tail before he dissapeared...and we were so close it was incredible! We got to see loads more though, Si got his first encounter with dolphins, a small pod of dusky dolphins followed the boat for a while, and we saw seals and finally we saw a royal Albatross. Yes i know we saw them already, but this one was close and not concealed by fog, finally when then boat got too close and he didn't like it we got to see him take off and fly, he ran with his riddiculously large wings out and patting his massive feet on the water...hardly the most graceful in take off but was really beautiful when gliding around. So was a well worthwhile day,even if we did have to get up aat 5.30am!
We also went to a sheep shearing show, which was hillarious, we fed this enourmous ram, then the farmer dragged out (litterally) sheep and practically wrestled the poor thing down while he removed her coat, it looked brutal but was hillarious and fascinating at the same time, highly recomend this to anyone going there. And just up the road is the seafood BBQ where we tried everything on the menu and their garlic scallops were delicious, they did have a stragne habbit of putting everything on a sandwich...and garlic mussel sandwhices arent the best! But the seafood chowder was YUMMY! Unfortunatley we had planned to go seal swimming but the 6metre swell stopped that :(
Finally we arrived in Blenheim, the home of the Marlborough wineries, where we had but one afternoon but we made the most of it! We did a tour round the wineries...by bike. We had so much fun cycling round all the places have free nips of everthing on the menu (getting a little wobblier on the bikes each time we left!) and spent a fortune on the bottles of some beautifu wine and then brought some smelly cheese and biscuits and pretended to be civilised people in the back of our campervan eating canapes and sipping Marlborough's finest vintage!
The alas it was time for the north island, so we borded the ferry and off we popped. However as is typical with NZ to cross that little bit of water known as the cook straits takes 3 and a half hours! It was 11pm by the time we arrived and we had to drive for over an hour to find somewhere to sleep, by god we were exhausted!
But we shot upto Tonagrriro national Park in the hope of doing a walk quoted to be "the best one day hike in New Zealand" crosing near 3 volacones including the one used as mount doom in the LOTR films, it was going to be 8 hours and hard but the pictures lookedincredible views of craters lakes and snow capped mountains, but the gods were against us and the moutains were covered with fog so thick that aparenytly you wouldnt be able to see the path markers so we gave up very sad and came to Taupo. Not to be off put we decided if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, we will got to the mountain, or fly 15,000ft up into the sky and throuw ourselves out the the plae to get a damn good view!

Whilst there though we had a mooch at a waterfall, which had a very nice blue colour to if, and went to a volcano activity centre where we got to see some footage of the mountains going off in the 90's which was pretty cool.


Unfortunatley our time in the land of the long white cloud had come to an end and we leave with one thought ITS NOT LONG ENOUGH!