Hey All,

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and you're gearing up for a very Merry New Year. We will be spending NY in Queenstown which shall be much better than last year when we were both in bed ill!!

Anywho, we got to Aukland on the 7th Decemebr and spent a few days checking out the city which we thought was really cool and then picked up our hire car and off we went (well, after buying all our camping stuff too!).

So we spent a week camping in the North Island but as soon as we got our tent out it rained and rained and rained. So we couldn't do the things that we wanted to do but we still managed to go on some awesome walks to waterfalls and such like and also hired mountain bikes for a day and rode down 'the old coach road' which is really historic (in NZ terms) and was brill. We also visited a Geothermal 'park' which was out of this world - the rocks were hot when you touched them for crying out loud! Amazing.

After arriving on the South Island we went straight to Abel Tasman National Park which can only be described as picture postcard golden beaches and blue sea. Beautiful. We went for walks on the beaches, swimming in the sea and also hired sea kayaks for the day which was quite hairy in places and hard work but overall really cool.

So we have been working our way south ever since and have seen some really beautiful places. New Zealand is unreal in it's beauty and different landscapes. We have camped in some beautiful spots and even managed to get some fires going to have real fire cooked jacket tats and of course cracked out the marshmallows

We spent Christmas in a place called Franz Josef which is home to a Glacier- so we managed to get close to the white stuff for Christmas Day. We visited Fox Glacier too which was also spectacular. We had a great Christmas day in 28 degree heat which was different but still great and of course we cooked ourselves a nice pork roast and drank a lot!

Apart from us both having rotten colds we are really enjoying our time here. South America feels like a lifetime ago! We've still got a couple of weeks left and I'm sure we'll see some even more beautiful places along the way.

Until then I hope you all have a great start to 2012!! Lots of love to you all and miss you all loads.

Katie and Vicki.xxx

P.S Enjoy the new photo's I've uploaded!