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...

So we arrived in the south island after a very picturesque ferry journey and took the scenic coastal route to Christchurch. Megan suddenly awoke to see huge mountains and coastal bays - what she classed as the real New Zealand. We have to admit it is very pretty, everywhere you look there is different colours, yellows, purples, whites and greens. Christchurch itself is a very quaint town, with a cathedral in the centre. We had a walk around the town seeing the ...

Day 3 we drove through the Volcanic loop, passed Mt Doom (which we couldn't see) and towards the South Coast, visiting the little towns called ...... on the way. The beach was pretty awlful at one of the towns but we treated ourselves to Fish and Chips so were quite happy. We arrived in the capital Wellington early afternoon and had a little explore. It was a nice town with some cool shops that resembles more of a small town in the UK - somewhere like Aylesbury...

Today we drove down from Rotarua to the town of Taupo in the centre of the North Island. Stopping at the Geothermal site called Orakei Korako. This place was really interesting - located in a hidden valley with a lake and what looks like a glacier intruding from the rugged landscape. The glacier looking location is actually a huge geothermal park, with stained white rock, bubbelling geysers and mudpools. There is a man made wood walkway which you follow along to ...