27th April - 4th May Queenstown and Glenorchy The journey to Queentown was very scenic through the "fruit orchard" of New Zealand, with mountains on either side and a flat valley in the middle with bright autumnal trees surrounding the river. Even one of the villages was called Fruitlands. After the orchards we came into vineyard territory, which seemed odd as we thought it would be too cold to sustain grapes. We stayed in a Top "Tin" campsi...

22nd - 26th Te Anau to Balclutha (The Catlins) First day back; slept, did laundry, blog, ate, then slept. The day we were to set off to Invercargill, was a glorious sunny day, so drove back up to Milford Sound to see that sights we missed on the way back from the trek. It was a shame to leave such a spanky, trendy, sophisticated kitchen and toilets behind. Was like some trendy loft apartment living (but without the loft apartment). Milford Sound was pretty fan...

18th - 21st April Milford Sound Trek Day 1: Glade Wharf to Clinton Hut 240m - 5km (1.5 hours) Day 2: Clinton Hut to Mintaro Hut 600m - 16.5km (5 hours)Day 3: Mintaro Hut to Dumpling Hut 150m via Mackinnon Pass (1069m) - 18km (7 hours)Day 4: Dumpling Hut to Sandfly Point - 18km (5 hours)Total: 53.5km (33.5 miles) The Milford trek is in the heart of the spectacular Fiordland National Park of southwest of the south island. The trek is around 53km following the riv...

10th - 15th April Lake Takepo (Mt. Cook) to Dunedin Days spent:Lake Takepo: 2 Oamaru: 1Dunedin: 3 It was a long journey to Lake Takepo from Akaroa, and didn't get there until 4pm that afternoon. We stopped off a Geraldine for lunch as it was suppose to be a lovely town, but we had seen better. We were lucky with the weather and it was still sunny, so all the mountains were looking their best. The lake, as with most water here in NZ, was a light spearmint colou...

4th - 9th April Christchurch to Akaroa The flight from Brisbane to Christchurch was quite short, only 3 and a half hours, however it wasn't one of our most comfortable of flights, as the plane was small, old (no head rest screens for movie on demand), crap food, and only 2 toilets on the whole plane, so there was a constant queue. I think we'd been spoilt with Singapore and Thai airlines. The customs were extremely strict for our flight from Oz. We had to decl...