Hi, here's an update letting you know what we managed to get up to (despite the rain for the majority of the time!) during our last week on NZ's South Island. After arriving in Picton the night before, we used Wednesday as lazily as possible, taking our time to get up and then moving from Picton's YHA (which wasn't the nicest place we've ever stayed!) to 'The Villa', just around the corner. We were paying the same price, but the hostel was so much better, and we...

The last four days has seen us descend from the cold heights of Franz Josef Glacier to the milder Abel Tasman National Park: We left Queenstown early on Saturday morning after a horrendous night's sleep. The only other guy in our dorm, Reuben, had a chronic snore, which literally ripped through our sleep. It was so bad that Jo woke him up, with an 'excuse me' to ask him to move off his back...it really startled him, and he made a very strange and loud noise and ...

Hi everyone, here's a blog to let you know what we've been up to in Queenstown for the past three days! We didn't arrive until around midday on Wednesday after a long, round-a-bout drive from Te Anau, during which we think we saw possibly the most cows we've ever seen in our lives, stretching back along the road for about two kilometres and creating a huge 'go-slow' area! We love Queenstown though, it's probably our favourite town we've visited so far. It's much...

Hi, Time for an update from Dunedin, Te Anau and Milford Sound. It was a long drive on Saturday morning from Mount Cook, south and east, to Dunedin on the coast. We shared out the driving between all of us, and as usual the scenery was spectacular. It gradually changed from snowcapped mountains to craggy peaks and then rolling hills. The last third of our journey was by the coast, and we saw plenty of wet and rugged shoreline. We arrived in Dunedin about four ho...

Welcome to New Zealand everyone! We've been here four days so far, and have already fitted so much in that it feels like we've been here ages (in a good way!). We flew into Christchurch late on Monday night, arriving at our 'Jailhouse'. This hostel is a slightly spooky old place (especially when you arrive in the middle of the night!), as it was an old correctional facility which wasn't actually decommissioned until 1999. It's huge and empty and the echoes reall...