We had a relatively early start with a taxi ride to the port. We giggled at the small group singing carols whilst we queued for the Interislander ferry from Wellington to Picton. The boat was rammed as they had one boat out of service and it also being a few days before Christmas. The journey was just over 3 hours and the scenery good as we approached Picton. On arrival we picked up our 'new' car from omega. A silver Sunny with manual gearbox. I decided ...

All packed up, we embarked upon our journey south to Windy Wellington, or Welly as it's known to locals. Having harped on about it we stopped at a McDs to try a Kiwi Legend. Mmm... A meat pie with cheese in it. Not content with its calorific value, we added fries and drinks. The fries were useful to soak up the excess pie juice, which was OK. At least it shut me up! We returned our car to the car hire place and got a free ride to the CQ Comfort Hotel on Cuba ...

We slept well and woke with surprisingly few aches and pains. Breakfast was a healthier option this morning with some lovely fresh fruit. We headed out in search of a gentle walk to the waterfalls near Whakapapa (pronounced fa-ka-pa-pa) and found ourselves at NZs highest cafe at 2020 meters altitude. I had a delicious hot chocolate whilst Gary had a flat white rated 8/10. The views were amazing as we'd taken two cable cars to get there. Tempted by the snow on...

One of the top things I wanted to do here in NZ was to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. A 19.4K walk heralded as the finest one day walk in this fine land.And I've done it! And so did Gaz! No ankle dramas and so far very little pain, although given the distance we covered I'm expecting some. We were fed a full English brekkie at 7am, given a larger than necessary packed lunched, ushered onto a minibus and dropped at the Mangatepopo carpark and started ...

Gary was still very excited about camping when he woke up at 6.30, despite the fact that his brand new self inflating mat had deflated during the night and left him on the ground. He was in the sea again before brekkie and he did lovely dippy(ish) eggs and marines (soldiers to most people!). We packed up camp and headed back towards Rottenrualand. We stopped just outside the town at Redwoods and walked the quarry look out track through various types of forest, mo...