We were picked up early by the bus and headed to the steepest street in the world which happens to be in Dunedin - it was a bit of a trek up and I can't understand why anyone would want to live on it, imagine backpackers walking up the slope infront of your window every morning!! We then headed up the coast and stopped at a beach to see some boulders, I unfortunately missed the boulders as I decided to have a fried breakie which took ages to arrive, whoops! We s...

Well I headed to Dunedin on my Catlins Coaster which turned out to be one very long journey along the southern cost of New Zealand. It commenced at Invercargill and continued along stopping at little bays to view yellow ringed penguins (they are pretty rare) and also we got to see the rarest and smallest Dolphins in the world the hector dolphins. At one beach we stopped out there was a petrified forest - forest that had turned to stone! We also viewed some pretty...

The old magic bus stopped at a fruit farm on the way to Queenstown which kept me happy - although they claimed to make fruit ice-cream for you there and then, I should have known better as I thought they were going to make proper good stuff - all they did was take some cheap vanilla ice-cream and blend it with the fruit of your choice!!! Arh well I was daft to think they could do it whilst you waited! The weather was pretty terrible when we got to Queenstown but...

Not so long on the bus today. We went past another glacier called Fox Glacier then stopped to view Lake Matheson - known as "the mirror lake" as it is famous for its reflections of the Southern Alps which dominate the skyline. The scenery changed on the way to lake Wanaka from dense forest to vast plateaus as we entered the Central Otago region. We passed Lake Hawea which is absolutely massive and 400 odd metres deep! Lake Wanaka was pretty massive ...

Poor Charlie, it was a 7am departure from Greymouth to head to Franz Josef the place famous for it's Glacier. We had a much needed stop at 9am in Hokitika where they had a rather nice cafe and lots of Greenstone shops. We then headed on to Ross which is historic town made famous for it's gold mining. We could do a bit of gold panning if we wanted but it was only in tubs of water and it was all too set up for me and they gave you your stones with a bit of gold ...