For those that have never heard of it, Milford Sound is one of the major tourist destinations and spots of natural beauty in New Zealand. If I may i'll get a bit technical on you know and point out that it is not in fact a Sound at all but is a fjord; a fjord being a valley created by a retreating glacier which then fills with the sea. A sound is similar but has nothing to do with glaciers; or something like that anyway. Who cares? It looks great. The base for ...

Omaru then. Well the only reason we came here was to feed Rhiannon's obsession with penguins which we did thoroughly. That's really the only reason that I can think of to come here by the way so if you don't like them i'd skip it. Omaru is a feeding ground for both yellow eyed and blue eyed penguins who come in from the sea every night to nest, sleep and make baby penguins. The yellow eyed ones were alright but we only saw a couple and only one of them came clos...

A frantic drive to Lake Tekapo from Christchurch, I touched upon it before in the van blog, but Rhiannon spent the entire drive in the 'brace' position and refused to even put the radio on for three quarters of the journey in case it distacted me, or her. or the other drivers, I don't know. It was raining by the time we got there which didn't really bode well for the first night in the van, but I think it went ok, the bed is actually pretty big so we got a good ...

I just have to say a few things about the van. We picked it up in Christchurch at around midday and Rhiannon who had previously claimed was really excited about the van and considered it the start of our travelling suddenly looked panicked. I'm not sure what it was pehaps the realisation that we really were going to sleep in a van for five weeks or that I was going to be doing the driving. We'll get some pictures up soon but it is a Mazda 2ltr petrol van from ab...

From the hustle and bustle of San Fran to the calm and laid back atmosphere of Christchurch in the summer where even the businessmen seem to amble along as if they haven't a care in the world. Yes, it won't shock you to know that I really liked Christchurch. Often called the most English of cities according to my Lonely Planet I can only think that thew person who said that had not been to England recently as not once did we see gangs of hooded kids terrorising ...