On 14 July we headed to Te Anau. This is a small town on a 65 Km long lake. Apparently the lake has the largest volume of water in Australasia (or so Doug the tour guide said). It is the last town before Milford Sound and so survives due to tourism. We woke on the morning of the 15th and thought we would just look around and take a few walks, but a check of the weather over the next few days made us bring our Milford Sound trip forward...so at short notice we to...

From 11th to 14th July we spent in Queenstown. This is the most expensive place to stay or live in New Zealand. This is a tourist town on steroids and doesn’t have an off-season. The only difference is that in the Winter there is the skiing and snow boarding. But all year there is the Bungy jumping, para gliding, zip lines, jet boats in the canyon, bush walking, kayaking, white water rafting and the gondola to the top of Bobs Peak....then ride the luge. Not wan...

9th July -We drove to Tekapo which is apparently known for its stargazing. On the way we detoured to the clay cliffs. They are located on a farmers property and you pay $5 per car via an honour box at the gate. They were amazing and seemed out of place amongst the usual farmland or granite hills. Ali got his drone out and managed to get some great aerial photos. Rather than clay, it is more compressed gravel and sand which is soft enough for the rain to erode the...

8th of July was our drive to Wanaka. We had planned to leave at 10am and drive slower to avoid the black ice, but as the overnight temp was going to be around 2 degrees and the prediction was for a sunny day, we decided to get on the road a little earlier. As such we arrived in Wanaka at 12:30pm. It was the first day of the NZ school holidays and so the small town was infested with pesky tourists pushing up all the prices ( eg. petrol $2.25 a litre). Every parkin...

On 6th July we left wet Christchurch at 8:15am and jumped onto the Tranzalpine railway which takes us from the Pacific Ocean in the East to the Tasman Sea in the West. The 4 hour journey goes through Arthur’s Pass and ends inGreymouth. It was a very relaxed way to get to the West Coast. Unfortunately if it wasn’t for the train trip (considered in the top 6 train journeys in the world), I don’t think anyone would intentionally go to Greymouth. It was a town ...