Happy New Year to you all!!!!
We hope you had a wonderful Christmas too!! Reports from several of you advised that it was cold, wet and miserable!! We were thinking of you!! :O)
Before we fill you in on our delightfully warm and unusual Christmas, we will give you a quick update on our whereabouts since leaving New Plymouth, so here goes…

In the week leading up to our final departure, we both experienced hectic weeks - mine involved training new staff, Trust Management/ handover of work and client visits… Chris's week involved doing as little as possible and "winding down" , being taken out on a work trip which involved traversing Paratutu rock in New Plymouth followed by a slap up meal!! He also watched and judged one of his Maori clients Christmas talent contests for a whole afternoon and had the strenuous task of picking a winner! Grr tough life - how does he manage it!!! On our last day we had a leaving morning tea where my Partner and Chris's manager gave a lovely speech and presented us with presents which was a nice end to our Overseas working experience. I was also given a $100 voucher by one of my main clients as a Thank you which was very nice too!

After all this excitement, alas the time had come for us to pack our bags, put the curtains up in Bindi Sue and hit the road again….

We set off on Saturday 19th December like a couple of Hobos, waving goodbye to Taranaki, and heading into the distance (avoiding the locals who were partaking in the annual (unofficial) bike pub crawl…yes this is as it sounds, lots of drunk locals riding bikes, tandems, unicycles, and various contraptions, all over the road and collapsing on to the grass verges after biking 100 yards and cracking open another beer…ahhh how we will miss Taranaki! After 5 hours we arrived in Wellington to catch the Ferry over to Picton in the South Island and spent our first night in a basic campsite, camping by the water in Bindi Sue. Ohh how idyllic I hear you cry…yes until you need a pee and stroll to the pit toilet where some fool had left the lid open overnight and the whole thing was swarming with flies and insects ewwwww… we fled the scene and decided we are not as hardcore as first thought and for the rest of our time vowed to only stay in holiday parks (still sleeping in Bindi) but with facilities including a shower and toilets!! This is obviously at a little extra expense of a few extra dollars - well worth it!

We then continued our drive to Queenstown along the west coast (seeing seals) and drove for 12 long hours to make it there by tea! Since arriving in Queenstown we have used Q'town as our base to explore the area and fully engage with the 'Adventure Capital' of New Zealand.

On my birthday (22nd), Chris organized for us to go horseriding (a 3hr trek) through paradise valley (which for those of you who have watched Lord of the Rings is the area known as the Misty Mountains and the big mountain with the eye on it). It was beautiful, although I think Chris may have regretted taking part in this as it took him two days to be able to walk properly! Chris also surprised me by booking us into a lovely hotel overlooking Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown which was gorgeous and made a very very nice change to the campsites, and as you all know, he proposed by the side of lake. :O)

Now….back to Christmas…well we felt incredibly unfestive this year, not only due to the rising temperatures here but also due to the distinct lack of Christmas decs here…there are none, no street lights, no tacky Christmas gifts in shops - nothing!!...this is very upsetting! In a bid to cheer ourselves up, we headed to Milford sound and did a cruise through the sounds (which is actually a fjord…long boring description why…) and we saw seals and bottle nosed dolphins and beautiful waterfalls cascading over the mountains, before returning to shore, and reapplying our 10th layer of bug spray due to the mist of sandflies you encounter at Milford which bite the hell out of you and give you blistery bites!!! Ouch! We then headed off on a 3 hour mountain climb to a remote lake and encountered our first Kea's (fat, walking parrot, native to NZ ). We managed to avoid too much rain which was a miracle as Milford Sound gets approx 8000mm of rain a year compared to London's average of 540mm a year! However, the rain did catch up with us on boxing day and it rained solidly for 24 hours so we were car bound - the downside to living in a car!

Since Christmas we have ventured into Central Otago, which climatewise, despite being only 100k from Milford, is a baron landscape which only gets about 350mm of rain a year. Here we attempted a section of the Otago rail trail and in 27degrees we biked 65km (approx 40 miles) along a disused rail track! We did think we had seen a mirage half way through which actually turned out to be a very nice pub where we topped up on sustenance i.e. a pint and chips and continued our plight. 5 hours of cycling later we finished our adventure with very sore bums and legs…seems to be the theme of Q'town.

Whilst in Q'town we also engaged in a spot of river surfing! This is an extremely knackering sport which basically involves belting down grade 3 white water rapids on a body board! It is insane and I was rescued several times by nice Kiwi instructors as I veered towards rocks, under waves and into whirlpools!! I concur that River surfing is a bit too crazy for me - white and black water rafting our about my limits!! Chris however, belted down the rapids for a second time - madness!!!

Chris has also made his international golfing debut at Queenstown Golf Club at Kelvin Heights, one of the most scenic golf courses in the world…it is possibly slightly less scenic now due to the amount of trees that were hit in the process!!

That's about it from us for now….so we hope you all are not suffering too much from your News Years Eve celebrations, we are off to a Wine tasting!!!!

NZ signing off!