The Catlans is a real contrast to Milford Sound, it reminded us a lot of Kent but with more sheep and strange natural wonders. We spent a day touring the Catlans and had a great time going off down dirt tracks and finding our way blocked off by hundreds off sheep and wading through peoples farms of mud to go and see a blowhole a few hundred metres inland. Kate had bought some wellies in the north island at the supermarket much to laura's incredulance but boy did ...

Going over the Haast Pass was magnificenrt but then everything is in NZ so you're probs bored of that. We stopped off in Wanaka which is a little skiing town by a lake, mini Queenstown, which was nice and not so pretentious. Still full of skiier bums though. So all you can do in that neck of the woods is go skiing so that's what we did. We decided to go up Cadrona because it was the cheapest mountain to get all your lift pass and hire and lessons etc. We drove...

We arrived in Greymouth, this relatively big seaside town and had intended to move on further south, but we were pretty sick of driving and so went to the cinema and luckily for us we had arrived in time to see The Simpson's movie. The next day we headed South and arrived at a town called Hokitika famous for Jade Jewellery and spent an enjoyable but draining day carving our own Jade necklaces, which I must say turned out rather fantasticly. That evening we heade...

This blog covers our journey from Picton (where we got off the ferry to the South Island) to Greymouth which is sort of in the middle of the West Coast.The South Island so far has been really beautiful and we are sort of getting view fatigue from all the amazing scenery but we do slightly miss the telly-tubby land of the North Island.From Picton we headed out towards Nelson, drove till the sun set and stopped over for the night at a really nice campsite by a lake...

Arrived in Rotorua late afternoon, found a campsite right on the lake so decided to feed the nice friendly looking black swans that then attacked us, luckily we ran away really fast. Then we found a supermarket where we spent hours getting all stocked up for the road. Cooked some dinner and hit the sack.The next day we went to the park in Rotorua, have I mentioned the town stinks of Sulphur (rotting eggs) because its a geothermal area, and so got amazed by the bu...