Friday 16th March Time to pack away the waterproofs and woolly jumpers, we were heading North to the Coromandel Peninsula, where we were assured it would be warmer. Stopped for our breakfast at Rotorua, surprisingly the town didn't smell of rotten eggs anymore. We drove around the lake and then onto the East coast past Tauranga, stopping at Whangamata to stretch our legs with a walk up the beach, hooray, the sand is now a golden colour instead of that horrible...

Thursday 8th March It was still pouring with rain as we headed North, our first stop was to be at Punakaiki to look at a series of limestone rock formations called "Pancake Rocks". Luckily for us it stopped raining for the 30 minutes it took us to walk along the path to this attraction, it is really amazing what nature does to the landscape. Huge waves crashing in over the rocks have created "blowholes" and we were given a good explosive show of the power of t...

Monday 26th February Time to finish "The Southern Scenic Route" which would take us from Invercargill to Te Anau, the sun was shining when we left but we hadn't gone 20km before a huge cloud was hanging over us. By the time we had reached Riverton the wind was gusting. Carrying on to Monkey Island we decided to get out of the car and try to take some pictures of the Southern Atlantic crashing in, we had trouble standing upright. As we headed inland the weather...

Sunday 18th February Had to be up at 4.30 a.m. to be at the airport for 6.00, our flight was leaving for Christchurch at 8.10a.m. and left right on time, we put our watches forward 3 hours this time as New Zealand are currently GMT + 13. We had fantastic views of the Southern Alps and the Canterbury Plains as we flew over New Zealand and arrived to brilliant blue skies and sunshine. After checking in at the hotel we walked to Cathedral Square (the centre of th...

Arrived into Christchurch yesterday, sun is shining and we done our balloon flight at last this morning. More to follow later