Well it's only been about two weeks since our last blog but A LOT has happened since then.

We didn't end up doing any wine tasting in Queenstown...it was too expensive! Instead, we spent some time in the town and went to the top of a mountain in a cable car, where we had the most amazing view of the whole of Queenstown! It was a really nice clear day as well which helped, but the water in the lake was so blue, we've never seen anything like it. We then camped in a conservation campsite that night about 12km outside of Queenstown and again, we had yet another fantastic view. We were a stones throw away from the lake and it was so peaceful to sit beside and read. We dipped our feet in but it was absolutely freezing! Sam went in up to his knees and I went in to just under mine, but we were both too much of a wimp to get our swimming stuff on and go for a swim!

The next day we drove to Franz Josef. We took the day to do this as it was a fairly long drive, but there were a few places to stop along the way and take photos. To get out of Queenstown, there's quite a big mountain with the road winding round and once at the top, the view was amazing. Further along, we stopped at Lake Wanaka for a while. It looked like a nice town and the view over the lake was like something on a postcard. Beautiful blue water with snow capped mountains in the background. Perfect. This was also the first of a few times of Sam being Dr Dolittle with birds, feeding some ducks a weetabix out of his hand.

It was then the morning of our glacier trip to Franz Josef. After a quick FaceTime to home, I got out of the car, went round to the drivers side door to unlock all of the doors, turned the key and snap. The key broke inside the door! After a bit of worrying as to how we were going to get around from then on without a key, a few calls back and forward to the rental company and the AA, we found the spare key under the drivers seat and Sam managed to get the broken piece out of the lock. Phew! Crisis averted!

Off we went to the glacier trip. We got kitted up in our over trousers, walking boots and crampons then it was up up and away in a helicopter to the mountain. It was really cool walking around the glacier, seeing lots of holes, cracks, crevasses and gaps in the ice. There was even the remnants of a cave that they discovered in October last year, but we weren't allowed to walk through it as they said it could collapse at any minute! Dun dun duuuunnnnn!! It was quite tough going walking on the glacier, especially in the shoes. When you've been used to wearing light flip flops for the best part of 8 months or more, to then have to put on heavy walking boots is a bit of a shock to the feet! The guide goes in front, making staircases along the way for us to walk up, but even then I still felt like I was going to fall.

After the glacier, we were allowed to go into the hot pools just down the road for free. It was nice to be able to warm up in there. There were 3 pools, one was 36 degrees, one was 38 degrees and the last one was 40. It's amazing how much of a difference a couple of degrees can make! "I like it hot, but I don't like it that hot!"

The following day, we drove through Arthur's Pass to Kaikoura. Although Arthur's Pass was good, I was expecting it to be a bit better than what it was. We did see a few kea birds though. They are the worlds only mountain parrot and they're very endangered so it was quite cool to see them. They're apparently very clever birds as well and we've heard a few stories about people leaving their car doors open and the birds taking stuff out and flying away with it!

We then arrived in Kaikoura and booked onto a tour to swim with dolphins the next day. This was definitely a highlight of the South Island for us. We sailed out for about half an hour, spotting fur seals and albatross along the way. As we got closer, we began to see dolphins jumping out of the water and swimming alongside the boat. The guide then told us to get into the water and there were so many dolphins around us. We hired a Go Pro camera so Sam got a lot of film of the dolphins as they came up to us and you can also hear his very convincing dolphin sounds too! We were in the water for around 35-40 mins and the guide told us our trip was what they'd call 'a one hit wonder'. They can have trips where they have to keep getting in the boat and moving along to follow the dolphins as they don't always stay in the same spot, so we were quite lucky.

Before we went out, they'd told us the sea conditions were 'moderate', meaning that they strongly advised anyone that suffers with sea sickness to take a tablet. Well...moderate my eye! It was SO choppy, pretty much half the boat (myself included) got sea sick, but it was so worth it for the amount of dolphins we saw! After we were back on the boat, we had a little bit of time to watch the dolphins through the window or the top deck of the boat. Again, Sam got some good videos of all the dolphins between our boat and another, jumping out, side slapping the water, it was incredible! We even saw a rare small dolphin called a hector which they don't always see on those trips, so all in all sea sickness aside, we were very lucky and had an amazing trip.

We decided to stay in Kaikoura for another night so that we could relax a bit and not have to worry about driving anywhere. (Sam also wanted to watch the Super Bowl!)

That then left us with our last day on the South Island. We drove to Christchurch and spent a couple of hours in the centre of the city before having to go and take the car back. It was quite sad to walk around the city really. They're still rebuilding from the earthquake 3 years ago and it's almost a bit of a ghost town in some parts. Whether the businesses that used to be in the buildings have moved elsewhere or they no longer exist, I don't know, but there are so many empty buildings. There are a lot of shipping containers around as well which are being used to support walls and there's a whole street where the containers have been used as shops, banks and coffee shops, which was quite cool. We went into an exhibit called 'Earthquake City' (not a great name) and learnt about the two major earthquakes that have happened recently and how they're trying to rebuild the city. There was even a video that someone's security camera on their house had recorded of the moment the earthquake hit, and you can see the ground buckling and the whole side of a tall building just fall down. They also had videos of survivors, victims families and some of the emergency services telling their story of what happened at day. It was very moving.

That pretty much concluded our time on the South Island, so the next day we were up at 4am to catch our flight back to Auckland to explore the North Island. Once we'd collected the car and stocked up on food, we made our way further north to Paihia. For the last few days, we'd been hearing about a special day that was approaching on the 6th February. Along the way to Paihia, we found out that it was a public holiday called Waitangi Day, and it was very close to where we were heading. "Great!" We thought. "We'll be right in the middle of all the celebrations, that should be good"...and it did start off really well.

Our campsite was directly opposite Haruru Falls, which is a sacred Maori waterfall and we had a great view from our car. In the morning, just after we'd finished breakfast, we heard some chanting and singing and when we looked out, there were about 8 canoes full of people coming up the river, over to the waterfall, then pulling up on the little bit of beach on our campsite. The weather was really miserable and rainy, so once they'd all gone and warmed up in the showers, they gathered on the beach and the chief gave a little talk about the waterfall (we couldn't really hear a lot of it) then they turned around and performed a Hakka. We'd been saying just a couple of days before that we felt bad we hadn't seen much Maori culture since being here, so our own personal Hakka performance was pretty cool! Afterwards, headed into Waitangi to see what sort of celebrations they had in store. It kind of reminded us a bit of the airshow, with lots of stalls selling food and bits and bobs and of course, the weather! We walked up towards the treaty grounds and just caught them bringing the big canoe called a Waka, that seats about 150 people, back on shore as the sea conditions were too bad.

Once we'd had enough of the weather, we made our way back to the car, all in high spirits at how good a start to the day we'd had. That didn't last long though as upon returning to the car, what had some delightful person done? Smashed the window in and stolen my backpack! What a way to ruin the day. I won't go into it all, but after a couple of calls with the police, a lot of crying and anger, we had to drive to a nearby campsite and check into a room as we couldn't stay in the car. The next day was pretty much a write off as well as we spent ages driving around trying to find somewhere to get the window replaced and then having to drive back to Auckland for them to do it instead. Thanks a lot you vile human being! Eventually, we were able to drive to Lin and Mo's where it was so nice to see some friendly faces and get some alcohol to our bodies! We both needed it!

Our time with Lin and Mo didn't quite go to plan, but we enjoyed our time with them anyway. I managed to get some new clothes and toiletries which definitely lifted my spirits, along with Lins homemade lasagne! Yum!

Onwards and upwards though, don't want to wallow in our misfortune and ruin the rest of our time in New Zealand. Thank god all of our valuables and passports are safe. It could've been a lot worse!

It came to the day Sam had been waiting the while trip for - Hobbiton! Although I have absolutely zero interest in the films and no idea at what I was looking at, I still enjoyed it and so did Sam. The views were very pretty over the hills of the farm and it was clever to see how they made the set. I think Sam probably wished he was with someone who he could talk to about the films though as I had no idea that 'Elijah Wood walked down these exact steps!' The best part of the day came towards the end when we got a free drink in the pub and I ate THE nicest muffin I've ever tasted in my whole life!

Once our journey to Middle Earth was over, we drove towards Lake Taupo where we camped for the night. In the morning, we went into town and booked onto one of the famous jet boat rides for the afternoon. We had a few hours to kill in between, so we drove to Huka Falls. It looked just like the river rapids rides you get in a theme park, I half expected to walk along the walkway and see water guns that you use to shoot at people as they go past in the jet boat! The water itself was described as 'ice blue and snow white' and that's exactly how it was.

It was then time for our jet boat ride. We went along the Waikato River and overall, the tour lasted just over two hours (which was really good considering a lot of the tours we'd looked at only lasted about half an hour!) It started with a gentle cruise along the river with the driver stopping in places to tell us various stories about the river etc. The whole area is full of geothermal activity so there is steam coming out of the ground in so many different spots. In the river, we even saw a small section where the water was actually boiling! We then continued on to what is called 'the squeeze'. This was basically where the river has pushed its way through the rocks and caused a small gap with a stream running through it. And as the name suggests, you have to squeeze through them to get to two small, but very powerful waterfalls! After a while of sitting under the waterfalls, we headed back to the boat and this time, the driver put his foot down to show us what the jet boats are really all about! It barely felt like we were touching the water...until he did a Hamilton spin (spinning the boat round 180 degrees) and we all got soaked!

I'm just realising how long this blog is! I told you a lot has happened in a short space of time!

Our next stop was Rotorua. To sum the whole area up - it smells of eggs! Something to do with all the sulphur around due to the hot springs. Whatever it is, it's not very pleasant.

So we'd wanted to do some wine tasting for a while but hadn't been able to find one that was a reasonable price, until now. We went up in the cable cars again (just like the ones in Queenstown but not as steep) and once at the top, we had another amazing view over the huge lake. This was also conveniently where the wine tasting was. Before we became sophisticated wine connoisseurs though, we went on a luge ride back down to the bottom of the mountain (with a chairlift that took us back to the top). Then it was time for the wine! And good timing too as it started to pour down just after we got in there. We tried three different white wines and two red wines. And yes...Sam did try the red wines! At the end, the owner got a 28 year old tawny port out for us to try and it was lush! If we weren't on a budget and were going straight home after, I think we would have stocked up on a few bottles!!

Our last day with the car was in Waitomo where we visited the glowworm caves. I wasn't expecting it to be quite as good as it was, it was amazing to see all the different formations that the rain has created over hundreds of thousands of years. When the lights were turned off, it was weird to think that the small greeny white lights we could see were actually worms!

And that pretty much concluded our time on the north island. We dropped the car off and headed back to Auckland where we had to wait until it was time to leave for the airport the next day to fly to LA.

Which brings us to now. For us, it's been Thursday 13th February for the last two days...we basically time travelled to get here going back 21 hours! We've got two weeks here before it's time to head back home, back to the real world and the horrible storms! Better make the most of it while we still can!