So cheating a bit as actually in San Diego now but hey!!! Arrived into Papeete v late on sat night after leaving Auckland on Sunday!! Cool time travelling!! hotel was ok but nothing stunning. Up early on Sunday to catch boat to Moorea. Pretty quick catamaran trip. Hotel on Moorea gorgeous. Real tropical paradise. Thatched bungalows over the sea, infinity pool and blue blue seas. Oh yeah and hot sunny weather!! I won't bore you all with details but basically al...

Soooooo last blog from NZ!!! And with a bit of luck should be able to upload a bucketload of pics tomorrow. From Waihi beach we called back in at Waihi and took the goldfields train through to Waikino - sweet little train ride - sat on a picnic table in an open air carriage!!! With a geordie conductor! Boys enjoyed it anyway - took us back through the river gorge - v pretty. So we headed up the Coromandel peninsula to Whitianga (pronounced fitianga and known a...

We had a fab day in Abel Tasman Park. Boat ride via the cool Split apple rock to Anchorage. Beautiful dark golden beach surrounded by bush. We walked round the pit head track and down onto a virtually deserted little beach for lunch - just beautiful - it did feel like we were on desert island. Back to the little beach at Anchorage for some serious dam building!! Had great afternoon apart form getting eaten alive by sandflies. Sunday headed to Picton to cat...

Beautiful drive again from Wanaka to Franz Josef - Had to keep stopping to take pictures of the lakes!! The scenery is just so stunning and so varied - roads are slightly hair-raising in places- tight hair pin bends with sheer drops at the side!! But Jase doing sterling job of negotiating us around them! The roads are so much better than in Australia and the miles seem shorter!! We followed the Haast river for a while and had stunning photo opportunity at the ga...

So we finally feel like we are starting our new Zealand holiday for real. We couldn't get to dentist in Christchurch but we did manage to talk to very help guy at the practice and he reassured us we should be ok for a week or so. He gave us the name of dentist in Nelson so we have appointment with him on Thurs.So we left Hanmer Springs reluctantly and headed south. Drove back through Canterbury Plains and out to Methven. This was only ever stop over but was prett...