We had a great couple of flights to get to Dunedin and were even the first to be dropped off by the Airport Shuttle. Why a shuttle? Why not a cab or an uber for the short, 20 kms / 20 minutes trip from the airport to town? That would be the ‘Not in a developing country’ tax - phew! NZ has gotten expensive(er) in the last couple of years - $80 fixed price for an airport cab. Vs. $36 for the two of us in an airport shuttle to the door of our new home. Absolu...

We enjoyed our 2 night stay in Christchurch but were massively excited to be nipping to the airport early on the morning of 3 April and jetting off to Nelson. Well prop-planing off to Nelson really, God Bless the Dash-8! Locals were still wearing t-shirts, though at least with long-pants, but we were well into our down puffy jackets in the chill of the early Christchurch morning. We really did not comprehend how relaxed domestic flights were in NZ. Turn up at...

We’ve come to the conclusion that you know you’ve been travelling for a while when you think of airports by their 3 letter acronym rather than their actual name. That time has certainly come for us - thus the headline “CMB-SIN-MEL-CHC” - or Colombo (Sri Lanka), Singapore, Melbourne (Australia) and finally Christchurch, New Zealand. We were up at ‘stupid o’clock’ in Colombo, very shortly after having gone to bed, to meet our driver at 3.50 am for ...

We left the safari lodge and hit the road for Colombo. Our first chance for a leg stretch was along the side of the road in Ratnapura - one of the most well known gem areas in Sri Lanka. Given that the country is home to 40 of the 85 types of gems in the world, we’d imagined it would be a fairly high-tech and commercial affair. But not so much. Basically, with a licence, you can put up a hut and dig a hole and haul gem bearing dirt up, seive it and find gems...

Standard protocols dictated a 7.30 am departure (the nicer the hotel, the earlier we leave). We had a good breakfast and bid a sad farewell to the Jetwing St Andrews. It was a long (5 hours+) and very bendy drive down the other side of the mountain. I had planned ahead and taken some anti-motion-sickness medication so was fine - others on the coach, despite warnings in advance, were not so lucky. The large breakfasts and late night probably didn’t help. We...