Wow! It's time to leave! After fourteen fabulous months in NZ, where we've had some amazing adventures (and some bad ones too!) it's finally time to head to the airport and start a whole new set of adventures in SE Asia. And as much as we've enjoyed our time here we are ready to leave now. We've been saying our goodbyes over the last month - it's always difficult when something is coming to an end and you are waiting for something new to begin - you feel sort of ...

16th - 24th April Hello! We've just finished our last NZ road trip, all without Shadowfax, in fact with a very poor replacement for our Shads. When people say don't buy an ex-rental this is probably what they have in mind - we just got lucky! Our replacement was a 2.0l Nissan Bluebird which we named 'Roller', partly as she is a blue bird (hahahaha!) and partly because she has a horrible fat front, rather like an imitation Rolls. It felt a little like a mafia car...

2nd - 16th April Hello and a slightly belated Happy Easter to you all! Haven't been very well organised with the blog recently have I? In fact I've just realised that as I wrote the last couple of blogs so far after the actual dates that I was writing about I forgot to include a couple of very important Happy Birthdays - shocking, I'm so sorry. So a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Dad for 25th March and Claude for 21st March. Luckily we didn't forget to send cards/present...

So how about all those photos of birds??? Time to fill you in on the last few days, including our amazing adventures in Kaikoura... So we waved goodbye to the West Coast and headed inland, passing a garage advertising the price of fuel as: 91 $arm; 98 $leg, which caused a little smile, and brought to mind again that New Zealand isn't quite as cheap as we expected. This was confirmed in a recent TV programme we caught at Franz (one of those terrible consumer type...

Return to the West Coast (19 - 24 March) WE LOVE THE WEST COAST! You know, Su & I were quite happy at Wanaka, it's a stunning place and we are sorry not to have seen it during the late autumn when the trees are bathed in gold and the mountains tipped with snow, but as soon as we returned to the West Coast it almost felt as though Wanaka was tame in its beauty, because we were instantly reminded of the wildness, remoteness and hugeness of everything. And we f...