The ferry took us across the Cook Straight to the port town of Picton where the bus picked us up and took us to Nelson. The hostel in Nelson was really nice; more like British pub/restaurant than a hostel. Nelson was a good place to stay for two or three nights because it was right next to Abel Tasman national park where there are plenty of walks, campgrounds, lakes etc to explore but we were really eager to get further south to Franz Josef so once again we only ...

We landed in Auckland International at around midday on Sunday and my bag managed to find itself on to the next carousel which took me about half an hour to realise. For New Zealand I had a bus pass for a company called Kiwi Experience. Our ticket would take us to almost all of the country apart from the very south and the east coasts. We caught the free shuttle bus directly to our first hostel in the centre of Auckland, checked in and went for a wander around th...