This morning we left the Poo Pub behind to head down to Franz Josef Village, home to a huge glacier towering over subtropical rainforest and numerous kettle lakes. We made a brief stop on the way at the Bushman Centre owned by crazy Pete. If I thought Poo Pub was weird and wild, I hadn't seen anything yet! It's a museum/café designed to educate tourists on how people used to make a living on the west coast, before tourism became the main industry. Helicopter dee...

We left early this morning to continue down the coast to Lake Mahinapua Hotel - otherwise known as 'Poo Pub' - just 10km south of Greymouth. I'd heard that there's nothing to do there except get drunk, so as you can imagine I didn't exactly hold high hopes for the place! It seems that everywhere on South Island is scenic and this drive was no different. We stopped at several lookouts and attractions on the way along the rugged Tasman shoreline, including the Cap...

After a relaxing morning strolling along the coast path, I hopped back on to the bus at 12.30pm to continue my journey down the West Coast. I am now on to my third different driver and there are about 27 of us on the bus. They seem to be a really nice group of people, which is lucky as I'll be spending the next few days with them! We stopped at a café in Murchison famous for it's delicious ice cream - 'Hokey Cokey' being the traditional New Zealand favourite! O...

It was raining when I got up at 7 this morning, but thankfully not too heavily. I had a nice walk along the beach with two other Kiwi Experience passengers to meet up with our kayaking guide, Richard. He's from the Phillipines but was full of interesting stories about the area and Maori legends. We were in double kayaks and thankfully the water was pretty calm so we had a great trip around the bay, towards the Abel Tasman National Park, with our target being the...

We left The Lazy Shag at 9am this morning to head northwards up to Picton via Blenheim, where most people got off the bus to catch the ferry to Wellington and just under 50 people coming off the ferry joined our bus. Everyone seems to be of a similar age to me or a bit younger if they are having a gap year after finishing school. The majority are English although there are a few from Denmark and Switzerland. We also changed drivers at Picton - we now have a wom...