On arrival we braved a trip to Cloudy Bay Vineyard (still feeling slightly worse for wear). The lady there didn't appear to like us very much, however obliged in taking our photo. We filled our boots with free wine and crackers, then headed into town where I actually bought some boots!!! Nice green pumps, $20, a true fashion accessory. To kill a bit of time we made a cuppa in the main road out of the back of Johnny, before heading to our 4 bedroom home for the ni...

An exciting couple of days... Picked up Johnny the Juicy, a people carrier style camper, and our home for the next 30 days. Coming along for the ride was Sean, a stranded Kiwi we adopted and agreed to drive back to his home in Murchison, and as the next few days tales evolve, he proved to be most useful. So he sets up camp in the back, the most comfortable seat in the house (check out the photo) and becomes our talking map/guidebook/photographer - very useful, I...

Arrived Christchurch, shattered and with sore throat. Home for the next few days was Addington Jailhouse, a working prison, converted into a hostel in 1999 and maintaining many of its original features. Much like a convict I spent the next few days sleeping and watching DVDs with the occasional exercise break (a wander up the road!). On the day Fiona arrived I finally made it into town to see what I'd been missing. The tram ride answered this question, and in a ...

Can't believe I am back in Sydney and more to the point, that it's my last week in Australia, where has the last 3 months gone??? I know that I have done loads and can at least leave feeling like I have done it proud, seeing almost all of Oz minus Tasmania and north of Carnarvon on the west coast - both things I plan to come back and do at some point. So time now just to catch up with friends and finally do the Sydney harbour bridge climb, many thanks to the ma...

And so commence the injesting of salt water, the bruising, the laughing, the aching and the fun that is the mojo 5 day surf tour in our crazy big black and pink bus. We were so lucky to have only 10 people on the tour this week, a tour that can sometimes have 50 people on it!! well actually we had 11 if you count our multi-talented bus driver and surf instructor ANT - even so it was all good! Our week was split in 2. Firstly, 2 nights at Spot X our first surf de...