We arrived in the tiny town of Te Anau just before dark and found a free campground just outside. Te Anau is the last place on the road before the 2 hour drive to Milford Sound and we planned to use this as our base instead of staying in Milford itself. The following day we explored Te Anau and walked along its lake, the plan was to drive up to Milford Sound that evening ready for our boat trip the next morning. However, just before we were due to set off we foun...

We drove south out of Dunedin and onto the Catlins route. We stayed on the coastal road for a couple of hours, until we came to Nugget Point. We parked up and walked along a gravel path that lead to a large wooden lighthouse and wooden platforms built on the rocks overlooking the sea. From the raised platforms we could see large chunks of nugget shaped rocks…quite a spectacular view. Nugget point was the last of the good weather for the Catlins. We continued al...

We took a shine to Oamaru immediately, mainly because it reminded us of Llandudno but also because of its numerous chippys and Victorian style tearooms. As we had arrived after 5pm the local info-site was closed and a sign directed us to the blue penguin colony office, which was open until 8pm. Unlike the i-site in Tekapo the lady at the blue penguin office was extremely friendly and helpful. She marked on a map a nearby place for freedom camping and gave u...

We left Christchurch late morning and set off on the 3hrs drive southwest to Lake Tekapo. We arrived mid-afternoon and were not disappointed by the magnificent views and the turquoise colours of the large lake spread out in front of us. As we had gone south and up into the mountains the air temperature had dropped significantly and the woolly hats came back out. We found the local i-site to ask about the freedom camping regulations for that area, but wer...

We crawled out of bed at 3.45am and silently got ready trying not to disturb others in our Sydney dorm room. At 4.45am a minivan collected us from our hostel and delivered us at the airport at half 5. We checked into our flight bound for Christchurch, went through passport control and wandered around the duty free as we waited to board the plane. The flight was only 3hours and went quite quickly, the last half hour was particularly amazing as we could see the N...