So it took the a day to drive the coast through Greymouth, Westport and into a Forest just south of Nelson where we camped for the evening. The colours in the forest are incredible, mixes of yellow, green, blues and purples litter the hills. The forests run for miles as well which is great for camping. We got to Nelson and drove up to a place called Kaiteriteri across the coast. This place was beautiful, with calm green seas and crystal white sandy beaches. W...

After a night camping in a Picton layby - yes we are that broke and that classy, we caught the ferry (with no breaking down this time) to Wellington. To say we slept the whole way would be an accurate statement! We then took the foretold less scenic route back up to Rotorua to take advantage of our free Polynesian Spa voucher :-). Route 1, which we were told was the quickest but not the prettiest route turned out to be amazing. We saw the valley that was used f...

So we arrived at the Fox Glacier first and it was raking it down, from the view point we couldn't even see the tip of the glacier. When getting up to the Glacier itself it was still pretty hard to see anything due to the torrential rain and fog. So we drove on to the Franz Josef Glacier - the more commercialized of NZ's glaciers. Unfortunately it was still pouring with rain - a shame because we had had nothing but sun since we arrived. We booked a glacier hike...

Today was a nightmare - Vinny the s*** as we are now refering to him completely died this morning - and by completely we mean no engine noise at all. So we had the AA out again and they recovered him to the airport where Dave on his last nerve lay into the comapany for a good 40 minutes on the phone to teh Assistant Manager. Now this is customer service for you - we were greeted with 2 hot chocolates, given a bigger diesel van (better on costs), given $150 for...

Happy that Vinny was now working we made our way to Queenstown via Mt Cook. The scenery here is really where it starts to get beautiful. With huge snowtipped mountains, huge lakes and acres of green and yellow fields. Mt Cook itself is still cover in snow, and the lake that sits to its east makes for some spectacular photographs. There is also a little church just to the south which holds services by the lake every sunday - really cosy place! From here we drov...