Where on Earth would we top the great experience we had in Fiji, we thought as our plane climbed over the rolling hills of Nadi and we saw them sink into the blue brilliance of the ocean. We meant that literally and where better to try than somewhere more people had cited as being their favourite destination to us than anywhere else. New Zealand. Conveniently, this happened to be our next stop.

Arriving in North Island we spent a night in Aukland before flying over to South Island where we had decided to focus our limited time. With it being high summer, we landed in Christchurch on a beautiful sunny day and immediately went out to buy our home for the next 3 weeks. This might sound a little extravagant but to shed some light, if it were to be described in a branch of Foxtons it would go a little like this:


- Constructed in early 2010 but still to be built, this property is situated in a prime, undeveloped location of your choice.
- This well designed studio apartment creates an illusion of space unusual in properties of this size, has no foundations to tie you down and is constructed of the highest quality man made materials.
- It also has fully taped seams.

LEASEHOLD

However, it wasn´t advertised by Foxtons and as such it was simply described as a ´Tent´ in the shop.

So, that was our plan - we bought a tent, a cooler, roll mats, a stove, folding chairs (with beer holders of course) and some cutlery. Then, we picked up the rental car and were ready to go North.

Half way to our first destination, Kaikora, it started raining.

And then, it kept on raining.

We set up our tent (in the rain) and spent our first night under nylon in a campsite fringing a beach listening to the powerful waves breaking and the rain pattering relentlessly on our tent. We awoke the next day to find that, unlike a property sold to you by Foxtons, the roof had held and the tent was dry inside. It was, however, still raining.

Kaikoura is a little town on the sea famous for its sperm whales, fur seals and dolphins which are so common in the ridiculously clean waters nearby that you can book on a boat to go and see them. You can even to swim with the dolphins and seals and stand an 85% (and up) chance of being successful on any given day. That´s exactly what we´d come here for but unfortunately the storms had made the sea far too rough so we unfortunately had to leave that idea behind.

Moving to our next stop, we found ourself in a beautiful campsite set amongst a bowl in the middle fo the forest about 6km out of a town called Nelson. Trouble with that is that it doesn´t really mean much if you can´t do anything because its raining so hard. We gave up and spent the day on an indoor rock climbing wall followed by the cinema.

After another night of storms our tent was still holding up but we decided to cut our losses and continue our journey northwards to the Farewell Spit. The scenery is meant to be stunning but the rain made that a little hard to see. On the way we stopped off at something that had caught Eleanor´s eye in the tourist information shop - a hang gliding place to check things out. Now, I don´t like flying in a fully functioning plane that actually starts out with an engine so the thought of going up strapped to a big kite didn´t particularly fill me with excitement.

Thankfully, it was still raining so they suggested we come back another day...

Setting up camp for another wet night we had started to question our wisdom in buying a tent and were also getting quite bored after 5 days of really not doing much except for driving. We decided that we should drag ourselves out of our little wet tent and do some walking the next morning.

We woke up and the sun was shining at last. We packed up the tent and drove the extra mile to the Farewell Spit passing beautiful coastline all the way there. Once in the Spit, we found ourselves on a huge beach with crashing waves, white sand, fossils in the limestone cliffs fringing the beach, fur seals lounging on the sand and hundreds of green lipped mussels on the rocks exposed by the low tide. Best of all, we only saw about 3 other people the whole time we were there.

Finally, after days of soggy boredom we understood! That´s what people loved about New Zealand! It is a pretty big country but with only 4 million inhabitants. 3 million of those live on North Island and only 1 million on the South. With the biggest territorial water of any other nation and such a small population New Zealand is sparkling clean compared with pretty much anywhere else I´ve ever been. You can go walking in the countryside and not bump into another person all day, you can go for a swim in the sea and pick mussels or abolone from the rocks and have no fear that it is not clean and edible.

Making our way back to the car we passed another smaller crescent of a beach where the tide was so far out we decided to walk down and see what shellfish might be around. Half an hour later we had dug up enough large, white clams (called littleneck clams) to fill the cooking pot we had taken onto the beach. We toped it up with some seawater to allow them to rinse clean, put a lid on and stuck them in the boot for later.

Now it was a long drive down south along the west coast following the amazing scenery right the way down towards the Buller Gorge. Unfortunately we went right past the hang-gliding school and this time the sun was still shining. This meant no way out...

A hang glider is just a big kite, nothing more. It creaks when you turn and you can feel the strain accross its frame. Last time I flew a kite was on Elie beach in Scotland and the wind gusted tearing my little kite to pieces... you can start off one of two ways, either you run off a cliff or you get towed up by a plane. This place went for the latter option with a little green kit plane towing you up to 2,500 feet with you strapped in a harness above the pilot waiting for him to detach the rope from the plane and see what`ll happen.

The tow up is odd, the plane is light and struggles against the hang glider which is designed to catch the wind, sometimes you could see the plane being pulled up or down by the glider. When the rope is dropped you float for a while and then the pilot decides it´s a good time to explain that he used to be a competitive stunt pilot and asks,

´What do you fancy mate, a nice float around to see the view or something a little more extreme´

´Um, well, whatever you think is best´

´alright then, you ready?´

As the guy pushes his hands down forcing the glider into a straight nose dive to earth, the acceleration is unbelievable and you don´t even get a chance to breathe before he pulls back up and you feel the strain of gravity on your body and the creaking of cables. Now the nose is pointing directly up at the sky and you`re slowing down. Gravity wins out and the glider begins to sink down backwards before the pilot leans left. For less than a second you remain stationary then stall left and bank down for another nose dive. The attached flight computer is beeping wildly to let the pilot know when he´s going up and down and about to stall. Finally, he swoops up and hangs there for a float over the airfield pointing out the vineyards, the Able Tasman National Park in the distance and the signs he looks for when flying. He gives me a go of steering and my heart is in my mouth. The glider is so sensitive that little pushes and shifts of weight bank us left or right and he makes me go into a dip before pulling back up. This gives confidence before he takes the bar back and circles over the fields where he finds a warm air current which shoots us back up with surprising speed. This, I think, really feels like being a bird. It is nothing short of amazing.

To land, the pilot explains that if you float slowly to earth you lose the necessary uplift and will simply drop out of the sky sideways or backwards. This means you have to fly the glider in. This involves getting to within 50 or 60 metres of the ground and then nose diving at full speed to the ground, pulling up at the last minute parallel to the grass runway and touching down lightly. I will forever have the image of the road, the red car and the three dustbins lined up there burned into my memory as we plummeted towards them before swooping up and in for the landing.


Eleanor next up and it is amazing to see from the ground the speed that the glider moves at. As she comes into land I hear a giggle erupt from the air as the pilot soars out of the nose dive...after that, the pilot and his wife offer us a beer and we sit and chat for an hour about advice of where to go and how to prepare abalone when you pick it off the rocks. They give us a couple of home grown courgettes (they have a surplus apparently) and we´re on our way.

And for the second time in a day we realise again what people love about this country. The people are so welcoming and friendly, they are happy to invite you into their homes after meeting you for only a couple of minutes. We´d already been offered a floor to stay on by two different New Zealand couples we met in Fiji, a night on the floor at the flat of the person that was working behind the desk of the indoor climbing wall who learnt we were camping despite the heavy rain and now we had just been given a bottle of beer and a couple of courgettes just because the people who ran the hang gliding school fancied a chat.

That night we drove until it got to near dusk and turned off to a remote campsite by a beautiful lake. We got the clams out of the boot, rinsed them and heated some garlic, black pepper and butter in a pan over our gas stove before throwing in the clams and half a bottle of new zealand white wine to steam them through.

They all opened up, fresh and tasty so we picked them from the shells and stirred them through some fresh pasta to make a spaghetti vongole. We ate them in the dark sitting next to our tent near the lake before falling asleep knowing that we had had one of the best days of the whole trip so far and having fallen in love with New Zealand.