We stopped and stayed two nights at Lake Tekapo, if you like your places to be remote, star-full, stunningly scenic, warm, naturally colourful, full of friendly locals, shops that shut by dusk, this place is for you! Lake Tekapo houses one of the world's largest starlight reserves, it has a classification that puts it in the only four in the world to have the darkest known skies known to man. Mt John observatory has telescopes that can scan up to 50 million st...

Kia Ora New Zealand (or Aotearoa as it is known by its maori name) sits on the boundary of two tectonic plates but we weren't thinking of that when we added it to near the top of our list all those months ago. We were thinking more about the glorious mountain ranges, sublime lakes, vast national parks that cover a third of the country, world class trekking and the very friendly New Zealanders. However, the recent history of Christchurch, our first destination...