Although Milford Sound is only 25 miles from Queenstown, as the crow flies, the actually return journey is 360 miles with the road looping round Lake Wakatipu up through Te Anau and along mountain passes through the Milford track and tunnel. We took a coach trip as the journey was 13 hours return, could have been a bit tiring and at least we could sit back and enjoy the full "WOW" factor of the wonderful scenery on offer. Milford Sound is in the world ...

Today saw us take a boat trip on the Steam Ship Earnslaw. The vessel is over 100 years old and well preserved. Originally the lake's only means of transport but is now used to carry tourists to the high country Walter Peak Farm, owned by a Scottish family until the 1960s. The farm is now a commercially run enterprise, drawing in the tourists all year. Although geared towards the kids we still had a brilliant time and found it interesting. We fed the sheep, cows ...

The journey to Queenstown from Franz Josef was pretty hair-raising (good job Ray doesn't have any)! As we travelled higher into the Haast Pass, the torrential rain turned to heavy snowfall. Most vehicles were stopping to put snowchains on but as we were all-wheel drive we presumed we would be ok and we didn't have chains anyway. The snow ploughs were out and were working well to keep the road reasonably clear -as it's the only road in and out to the west coast su...

The Glaciers were one of the 'must sees' on this trip but yesterday we were all set to leave Franz Josef bitterly disappointed having not experienced the full front of a glacier. The area was having torrential rain and very low cloud and was expected to last until next Tuesday. Unfortunately time is short in New Zealand and we haven't got time to hang around. We made our way to the Franz Josef Glacier but could only view it from quite a distance as the rain was...

Due to 60 knot winds and 8-12 metre swells in the sea (slightly inclement weather) we did not manage to sail out of Wellington on Sunday. Thankfully we were able to check back into our lovely motel and hibernate for another night. Began to think it really was going to become our home!! However, we set sail at 9.00 am Monday as things had improved and have to say not as bad as we were expecting. I am not a particularly good sailor so we stayed on deck which was p...