21st to 24th October 21st, thursday Feeling fit we intended to spend a good few days tramping the Abel Tasman Coastal track at teh far north of the south island so we headed up to Motueka, a cool little place full of the woodstock generation. The weather was great so we passed through and drove further up to the beach at Kaiteriteri where we stayed for the next couple of nights taking things easy and sunning oursleves. 23rd saturday With our camping...

20th October, wednesday We stayed in Punakaiki just long enough to see the little know pancake rocks on the coast. It cheered us up loads to find that actually ther eare far mor curious that we had expected. They are basically towering rocks being battered by waves that have formed in well, erm pancake shape layers or more like stacks of casino chips. Worth a quiick visit which is what it got. Acording to the Lonely Planet, which we had begun to read wi...

17th, 18th, 19th October The next few days after Queens town we spent driving up towards the west coast to the famous Glaciers. On sunday we headed up to Wanaka (reputed to be the next Queenstown) via a short stop in Arrowtown. It has a reputation for being like a wild west town and very pretty. I'm sure it is in the Autumn. It does however host another famous LOTR location where the Wraiths were washed away. (you know the bit although you will need your ima...

15th Friday Queenstown is abeautiful but tiny place overlooked by the Remarkables and sat next to a lake. Its rmarkable calm despite its tag as the adventure capital of the world. After all of our travelling we were glad to finally be in a place where we could spend at least a couple of days just being there. We had been staying at teh Top10 creekside holiday park just out of town. It had a nice socaible area where we met Heath and Viv, another backpacking engl...

We drove back up to Queenstown and arrived in the late afternoon after a really gusty trip where we thought we were going to be blown off the road. We were really impressed with the views of the city next to the river with amazing mountains as a backdrop. We put Delia into a campground and walked into town, it turned out to be glorious weather and we strolled to the waterfront and into a pub. We got a well earned beer and sat outside and chilled and talked and w...