Due to Ben's obsession with Lord of The Rings he was desperate to visit Matamata, a small village near to where Hobbiton was set in the LoTR's trilogy. We bought our expensive tour tickets and headed off in a van around a huge farm, filled with thousands of sheep. Ben got rather excited when we approached the main area of the set and was pointing at random scenery telling Lisa about the films, Lisa nods, smiles and makes enthusiastic noises! The best part of ...

Mount Cook was our next stop and once again, a long drive was ahead. After around 4 hours (we think) we got to the last campsite before reaching the base of Mount Cook. The weather was terrible, we could have been in Middlesbrough of the North Yorkshire Moors for all we knew, as you couldn't see more than 25 metres in front of you, never mind catch a glimpse of Mount Cook. We camped overnight and checked out the weather forecast for the next couple of days which ...

We really wanted to see Penguins, and a long 5 hour drive across to The Otago Peninsula in the Southeast of the South Island gave us the chance of seeing two types, the small Blue Penguin which only appears at night and the Yellow-eyed Penguin. As we arrived, we managed to get on the last tour of the day to the Yellow-eyed Penguin colony. In minutes there were cute-little penguins waddling past us up the hill back to their nests. The colony has lots of bunks ...

We arrived in Queenstown to some pretty awful weather, it was pouring down! We had a nosey around the town centre and looked at the beautiful scenery then decided we needed to save some cash so pulled up on the lakeside to camp over. Next morning we were due to do some rafting which got canceled due to the weather so we had a day of doing nothing except eating then drinking on the evening. Ben then booked himself on the 8am Bungy jump for the following morning an...

Our plan was to drive through Wanaka on our way to Queenstown but as we arrived we couldn't help but pull up at the beautiful lakeside and take in the scenery. Within an hour, we had the beers cracked open and were tucking into some Hokey Pokey ice-cream.....as the Kiwi's say - sweet as! The decision had been made, whilst turning slightly pink, we were staying here. So we checked into the nearest campsite and headed out for some beers. Considering this was a S...