With the sun shining again we made the short drive to Picton. The hotel was just off the main street, & Chris let us check in early, & had upgraded our room. He had also been very helpful in organising our wine tasting trip for the afternoon. His welcome made us feel immediately relaxed, & following a short walk we grabbed lunch at the Barn following his recommendation. The coach collected us from the hotel at 13:00 & took us off on our wine a...

A good night sleep left us refreshed for the day ahead. A light breakfasts with our hosts & we set off over the Takaka Hill, stopping for a photo, on our way to Nelson. We decided to do our daily walk straight away when we arrived. Today's walk was in fact a climb up a mountain. As Alan described as climbing in the cheviots, it was the toughest physical challenge we have undertook. Thankfully we had the sun beating down upon us, & the views from the t...

The cold stirred us both into action this morning. Unlike at dene terrace when the house was cold, you could jump into bed & get warm, the cabin beds did not. A breakfast of our remaining sausages & some scraping of ice off the car allowed us to leave at 7:45am. Arriving in Golden Bay at 10:15am, following the very funny morning show on More FM, Wendy & Patrick greeted us with warm drinks & gave us a good itinerary for the day. We decided to f...

We had a lovely breakfast with our hosts, with some homemade scones. Lynette then drove ahead of us to take us down to the coast for a wonderful view of Mount Cook/Greymouth now that the sun had come up. Following our hosts advice we took the coastal route in the sunshine. First off was the blowholes & pancake rocks, followed by a seal colony where we got to see lots of young seals waiting on their parents to bring them food. Next up was a drive through th...

It was still raining heavily when we set off. This ensured that we would not get a helicopter flight over the glaciers. Our first stop was Franz Joseph glacier. We saw the glacier from the car park as we did not have enough wet weather gear to attempt the two hour return walk. The rain continued for the rest of our journey to Greymouth, but we arrived it did become intermittent. As we had nothing planned in advance we set about exploring the area from the car....