Saturday 24th MarchThe drive to Milford Sound is stunning, as is the view at the lake. Once again we're blessed with great weather. We meet up with our kayak instructor, Will, who gets us all kitted out in the gear. He then announces that the person who sits in the back of the two man kayak should be able to multi-task as they have to steer as well as paddle. That'll be my job then! We head out into the lake and paddle around for about 3 hours while Will ...

Wednesday 21st MarchWe're releaved we visited Mount Cook yesterday as the weather isn't so great today and there's a huge cloud sitting over the top of it. We drive on to Queenstown and look around. It's a great place with a real ski resort buzz to it. It's also very beautiful with the mountains surrounding the lake. I book my skydive for the morning and we head out to Jean and Rogers who live in Cromwell.They have guests, a lovely couple call...

Tuesday 20th MarchWe drive south to Lake Tekapo, entering Mackenzie country with it's massive flat plains, huge mountains and beautiful lakes. It's quite similar to Scotland, except the mountains are around 3 times the size! The lake is quite spectacular and it's a beautiful day. We've been told that tomorrow won't be a great day so if we want to get some good views of Mount Cook we should drive on to see it today.So we head further down the r...

Saturday 17th March - Happy St Patricks Day!Simon and I are on different flights to Christchurch with his coming in much later on tonight. On my flight I sit next to Alex who is a trainer for an electronics company. Turns out he's also a huge fan of his own country and has loads of pictures he's happy to show me on his laptop. He's also more than willing to rave about all the places I should visit.I get the bus into town and walk past the massive iris...