Utter bliss. After some serious hard yakka (7 weeks of hoovering every single day), we finally accomplished the final (final, final) housework clean, banished all the animals for a day and stowed the bags in the car for an early departure on Wednesday. Wednesday saw pelting down rain pelting for our departure (situation normal in this uber-green part of NZ). We chucked the dogs in the back of the 4WD and hit the road for a dot on a map that probably doesn’t ev...

Well here we are. Almost 7 weeks down the track and ready (almost) to say adios to NZ. Definitely ready to say sayonara to Cambridge and the zoo-crew (so... a labrador, a fox terrier and a chihuahua walk into a bar, they use two Burmese cats as barstools. An African Gray and Amazon Yellow Nape, (talking parrots behind the bar) say ‘what’ll it be?’) As it turns out, fur infused, organised chaos. We can however highly recommend Dyson stick-style vacuum cle...

The last three weeks have meandered by with scenic drives galore. Whilst there have been some cold snaps and a few freezing days here and there with driving rain and howling winds, most of the time the weather has been fine albeit chilly. We have a 4WD at the moment and have been happily using it to inspect the scenery from every angle. We headed up the Jubilee Road and down to Little River by the very rarely travelled scenic route. Luckily we took our coffee...

We’ve been in Wainui for almost 3 weeks now and the time has flown by. So much so that we can’t believe we’re half way through our stay in this beautiful part of the world. Despite having grown up in Christchurch and definitely visiting several of the bays around Bank’s Peninsula - I don’t think I ever made it here - so it’s been a real treat. The weather has treated us well - a solid mixture of frosts, stunning sunny days and the occasional days to...

A long, long time ago, in a lifetime far, far away, we used to watch a programme called Blackadder, starring Rowan Atkinson. One of the many witticisms (or racist tirades) that stuck was when the Welsh language was being discussed and Blackadder said you needed half a throatful of phlegm just to say the place names. The New Zealand place names sometimes remind us of that show. We’ve been in these parts long enough (in my case, for a fair while between birth ...