A great night of peace spent in Chateaux Franz, the motel side! Bliss! After we had dinner we headed to Okarito which incidentally is where they return the kiwis to and saw our first road sign for kiwi! Sweet! We headed out to watch the sunset as you get a panoramic view of the southern alps and the sunset! Made it just in time and was beautiful. This morning, we woke up to bright sunshine!! Woohoo!!! Headed back to Fox as were booked on the 8.35 half day hike....

I woke up this morning (after finally falling asleep at 1am) and thought two things: 1. It is raining; 2. How soon can we get out of this room? Luckily, Claire thought the same about the room and told me to pack my things quickly before she climbed out off the top bunk and left to find us a new room. All of our hostels until now have been brilliant but this one was a complete nightmare. It was so busy and loud and the people weren't friendly at all. Claire r...

We thought it was about time you met Lucy! As you can see she is small and green but a mean machine! She is mischievous and cheeky and doing a grand job! Another driving day... Just over 8 hours in all of beautiful roads and gorgeous scenery and beautiful sunshine! Out of Kaikoura on what turned out to be a beautiful calm day, one suitable for boat trips! If only we had one more day but we had to cross over the mountains to the West Coast today, the whole width...

We got up this morning and got ready for our whale watching trip. Shorts - check, suncream - check, sun hat - check. We were all ready to go when we opened the curtains and went outside to find high winds and rain. Damn! As we went down to the whale-way station I was a little nervous as I get seasick and the water was very choppy. When we got there we found our trip had been cancelled :-( We rescheduled for 4pm in the hope that the sea might calm and so had a w...

Today was a driving day... Left the Golden Bay YHA in good time and had to head over "that" hill! Takaka Hill, but it didn't seem so bad going back.... (it was one of the lord of the rings locations) Passed through Nelson, Blenheim and picked up our old friend the SH1. The scenery was beautiful and it's clear that the mountains and hills are the dominant feature of the landscape. Passing around the coast there were hundreds of seals, we stopped at the Ohau Poi...