Woke up this morning to beautiful sunshine after a stormy cloudy evening. We had already planned to re-do some of the route from yesterday if the sun was shining to get a good view of both lakes. First of all, checked out the YHA, packed up Lucy and headed back to the pharmacy to get sone advice on Jo's sandfly bites which now look like oozing volcanoes erupting out of her legs!! Ok, not quite that bad!! Just not too pretty. The pharmacist squinted and grimaced ...

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...